Sun


Sun.com Gets a Major Facelift

Posted on November 7, 2008

If you don't make it a habit to hit the Sun.com front page frequently, have a look. I've notice some incremental change over the last couple days and tonight its gotten a major facelift. It now pushes offers in your face more prominently (downloads and try-n-buys), integrates a lot more video (most is rehashed stuff that you may or may not have seen), and most interesting breaks down business sectors. One interesting thing is banners ...

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Sun's recently been on an "Open Storage" kick. They define this as using "industry standard components" together with "open source software". Frankly, the pitch sounds pretty similar to the one Sun has had for the last 2 decades of "open standards" products... the new tact is really just pitching the cost savings of specifically depending on open source software freeing you (potentially) from high licensing costs. So, there are 3 ...

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Sun’s Next Branding Blunder: xVM

Posted on June 4, 2008

I really hate bashing Sun, but I've gotta speak out against Sun's continued moronic branding. Following in the tradition of "N1", "Java Enterprise System", and the horrible replacement of the good brand StorEdge with the misused StorageTek brand (applied to everything from long time Sun Arrays to Adaptec controllers), comes xVM. Lets look at the definition of "brand": 4 a: a class of goods identified by name as the product of a ...

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X4150 Frustrations

Posted on June 2, 2008

I thought this was funny... taken from the latest Driver/BIOS CD: Sun Fire X4150 Remote Firmware Update procedures ======================================================================= NOTE: To update the BIOS and SP for the Sun Fire X4150, the onboard CPLD *MUST* be updated first. This necessary update adds required functionality to allow the BIOS fo function with the new range of Intel Processors. Proce...

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AMD Road Map

Posted on May 14, 2008

AMD released their new roadmap today. Several references to the Barcelona delays (AMD Quad Core, delays which have impacted Sun's release schedule) are scattered throughout and positioned as a major setback for AMD to overcome in the next several years. Whether you follow the news or not its obvious to anyone in or around IT that AMD has given up a tremendous lead over Intel in the last 2 years and Intel is continuing to pummel 'em. Lets ...

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Last week amongst the fun at the MySQL Users Conference I woke up early enough one day to watch the keynote at which Jonathan Schwartz presented a 30 minute talk about the aquisition, Open Source software in general, and Sun's principles. I highly recommend watching this keynotes replay and I kindly ask that you resist the urge to flip through it, but rather get a cup of coffee (I need Illy as a sponsor) and set aside 30 minutes to watch it ...

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Whats up with Sun PR?

Posted on April 24, 2008

I hate to be critical, but some times something has to be said so folks know we're paying attention. New systems are available from Sun, the Sunfire X4140 and X4440... behold: These systems are AMD Dual Core and presumably NVIDIA chipsets (an earlier comment by a read states its 4 GE ports are NGE). There is no press release that I can find! Joerg Moellenkamp blogs about it here, and the Sun "On the Record" blog mentioned it as ...

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X4100 and X4200 Clearance @ Sun

Posted on March 18, 2008

I'm not one to really go nuts over most "clearance" sales, but I'll make an exception here. Sun has put X4100 and X4200's on Clearance! These all look to be non-M2 systems! Snatch them up while you can! If your asking, "why would I want non-M2 X4n00's?" the reason is that the X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 have 2 NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet Ports and 2 Intel EtherPro (E1000g) Ports, versus the standard X4100/X4200's that have 4 proper E1000g's. ...

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Sun Aquires MySQL AB

Posted on January 17, 2008

I'm getting requests to comment on this and, for the time being, I'm going to limit myself. I'll say that its happened, Sun stock rose almost US$1/share prior to the market open and held onto the gain pretty well all day. Personally I think this is a mistake for Sun and MySQL both and as a shareholder I'm very upset at Sun's continued lack of focus or commitment. That said, I need to spend time looking at the details of the deal to see if ...

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IMHO: Sun & OpenSolaris… 2007 and 2008

Posted on December 30, 2007

Its the end of the year and I feel like some comments about where we are, meaning OpenSolaris, and where we're headed are in order. I'll wrap this post more tightly than I have in the past with the "IMHO" disclaimer given that my opinions are not always reflective of others. So please, interpret the following in that light. 2007 was, for Solaris and to some extent Sun, a year of transition. Looking back, the both Solaris and Sun ...

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