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Sun Microsystems Hardware

Sun Announces Its First Laptop 365

boarder8925 writes "Enterprise computer maker Sun Microsystems announced its first-ever laptop yesterday, saying the machine was designed to let engineers and scientists perform demanding computer tasks away from their desks. Sun, which has seen sales fall for the last four years, said that it was also lowering prices for some of its computers by up to 40 percent."
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Sun Announces Its First Laptop

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  • by The_Rippa ( 181699 ) * on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:18PM (#12946191)
    It doesn't seem big enough (dimension-wise) to fulfill it's purpose.

    I mean, in two years will it be able to hold down as much paper from blowing away as a full-size SparcStation does?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:23PM (#12946229)
    too hot for my lap.
  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:29PM (#12946276)
    "Enterprise computer maker Sun Microsystems announced its first-ever laptop yesterday..."

    I heard it was just a Sun Blade 2500, but it now comes with this really big backpack.
  • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:39PM (#12946343) Journal
    That's right! Sun's cutting prices up to 40%! Mad Dog McNealy is running throughout the store, lifting his leg to great deals! Look at this great workstation! Was 5 trillion dollars, now only 443 billion dollars! With prices like these, this sale won't last long! Get down here while there are stil LOW LOW prices!

    Mad Dog McNealy says "Linux is Red Hat, Red Hat is evil, but Microsoft is A-okay!"

    This sale is brought to you by Sun Computers, maker of Java, slower than Espresso, and guaranteed to run badly on any platform!

  • Re:$3,400 (Score:5, Funny)

    by enigmatichmachine ( 214829 ) <enigmaticmachine@NosPaM.yahoo.com> on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:50PM (#12946429)
    and it weigh's over 20 LBS and has no battery, I would call a tadpole a "laptop form factor computer", kinda like how kraft has to call that stuff it makes "processed cheese food"
  • by NickFortune ( 613926 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @07:55PM (#12946454) Homepage Journal
    Gosh, with silver tounged ambassadors like yourself ready to launch a charm offensive on their behalf, how can they possibly lose?
  • by Un pobre guey ( 593801 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @08:04PM (#12946517) Homepage
    Mountain View, CA - June 29, 2005 - Sun Microsystems announced today a radically new information storage and communications system using nanotechnology. Using tiny carbon-based fibers carefully prepared, purified and pressed into paper thin sheets, along with sleek, ergonomic pigment deposition units, Sun has introduced a tablet-based handwriting-centric system they believe will inundate the world.

    Availlable in units of 75 sheets each, the beautiful yellow nanotech material is easy to hold in the user's hand or attached to a conventional clipboard. It requires no external power, relying exclusively on passive power derived from the user's physical manipulation of the material. The stylus is available in models that apply black, red, blue, or green pigment to the nanotech sheets. They also rely entirely on the user's physical manipulation for power, and only require periodic changing of toner cartridges that are small tubular components only a few millimeters in diameter. Sun has thus eliminated the cost and logistics required to distribute electrical power, UPS facilities, and expensive rechargeable batteries to users. Data storage is for all intents and purposes permanent, and is impervious to even multi-Tesla magnetic fields and large amounts of electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum. Styli that contain precisely machined lengths of purified graphite-based toner will soon be available and will add erasable read/write capability.

    The nanosheets will be available in units of 10 pads of 75 sheets each for $2500 list price, and non-erasable styli are available in packages of 25 for $1295. The advanced machined graphite styli were not available at press time.

  • by memfrob ( 157990 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @08:18PM (#12946595) Homepage
    This sale is brought to you by Sun Computers

    Pardon the interruption, but the marketers making the previous offer have been sacked.

    "More LOW LOW prices, now from SunSOFT...

    We apologize, but the people responsible for sacking the previous marketers, have been sacked.

    "..and you can ONLY get this deal from the brand-new Sun... er... Microsystems!

    Once again we apologize for the interruption. The people responsible for sacking the people who were sacking the marketing droids, have been sacked.

    We now continue with some less offensive Slashdot commentary...

  • by Decaff ( 42676 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @08:36PM (#12946731)
    I wouldn't be suprised to see a slashdot story announcing Sun going out of business within a few months.

    Me neither. They have been turning up regularly for years.

  • by SethJohnson ( 112166 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @11:01PM (#12947571) Homepage Journal


    If you look closely at the garbage movie, Twister [imdb.com], there are a couple scenes where the meteorologists are out in the field with their stupid school bus looking at satellite data on a laptop. I'm guessing because they got a deal on CGI work, Silicon Graphics wanted every computer in the movie to be one of theirs. So on this laptop, they had a piece of masking tape on the bottom of the screen with the letters handwritten- 'SGI'.

    More ridiculous than that, though, was when the hailstorm came. This ragtag group of meteorologists, working on a shoestring budget, grabbed their stuff and ran for cover. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character uses the 'SGI laptop' as a shield from the hail holding it over his head as he ran towards the school bus.
  • by kv9 ( 697238 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @12:52AM (#12948036) Homepage
    yes indeedly-doo, very *to* bad.
  • by HardCase ( 14757 ) on Thursday June 30, 2005 @01:30AM (#12948163)
    These days, all of the chip-design tools also run on Linux (and in fact, Linux is used more than Sparc/Solaris these days), and it would be far more economical to do demos on a Linux laptop.

    I've got a Dell PowerEdge 360 that runs rings around the Sun Blade 1000 next to it, except for one problem - the PCB simulation software that is written for both Solaris and Linux has a glaring bug in the Linux version that causes it to crash after displaying just a few waveforms of transmission line simulations, making it pretty much useless. And the bug has been there since the Linux version was introduced (in the last major release). The vendor's response? Yeah, they know about it, but they don't have the assets to fix it. Windows is their bread and butter, followed by Solaris, followed by Linux, which gets a passing glance.

    And, unfortunately, they are the de facto standard in my business, so I end up doing most of my work on the Sun machine.

    I do have to say, though, that after three years, the Blade has been rebooted twice (both times because my big feet got tangled up in the power cord) and the Dell has been rebooted a bunch of times after replacing a couple of defective hard drives and a bad memory module. I expect that the Blade will be going strong long after that Dell has hit the scrapheap. But, doggone it, Linux sure runs some stuff a hell of a lot faster than Solaris on that Sun.

    -h-
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 30, 2005 @04:47AM (#12948716)
    Total number of failures during 12+ 24/7/365 operational years: 0. Not even a single hard drive or dimm failure.

    I've got a Mr. Murphy on the line for you. I think he's some kind of Policeman.

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