Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on October 25, 2005 03:40 AM
This machine is going for between $3,400 and $6,500, for what, a 550MHz or 650MHz (or, if you sell the farm to actually buy this thing, a 1.2GHz) 64-bit CPU? For half that money, I can get my hands on an Athlon64-based laptop with way, way more computing power than the Ultra 3 and run GNU/Linux or *BSD on it. Heck, I might even be able to run Solaris 10 x86-64 on the Athlon64 laptop!<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-) This Ultra 3 mobile "workstation" was outdated the instant that Sun decided to cripple it with that (by today's standards) ancient CPU. Oh, and no 3-D acceleration, either, eh? Yeah, some workstation (LMAO).
This is why Sun's having problems. They're assuming that just because "it's a SPARC", it will sell for high dollar$. Nope. If some businesses are still relying on Sun Blade 100's or 150's to do their heavy-duty floating-point number crunching (which is what 64-bit CPUs are for, BTW), then they should take a look at some dual-Opteron boxes, with dual-cores each. Now *there* is some serious 64-bit workstation computing power that will increase their efficiency and save them money in the process.
I just don't see a need for an ancient-technology "mobile workstation" like this Ultra 3. Had it been introduced, say, five years ago at that price, then HECK YEAH, BABY! Sun could even have gotten away with selling the 1.2GHz version for $3,400 three years ago. But not today.
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Why would anybody buy this?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on October 25, 2005 03:40 AMThis is why Sun's having problems. They're assuming that just because "it's a SPARC", it will sell for high dollar$. Nope. If some businesses are still relying on Sun Blade 100's or 150's to do their heavy-duty floating-point number crunching (which is what 64-bit CPUs are for, BTW), then they should take a look at some dual-Opteron boxes, with dual-cores each. Now *there* is some serious 64-bit workstation computing power that will increase their efficiency and save them money in the process.
I just don't see a need for an ancient-technology "mobile workstation" like this Ultra 3. Had it been introduced, say, five years ago at that price, then HECK YEAH, BABY! Sun could even have gotten away with selling the 1.2GHz version for $3,400 three years ago. But not today.
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