On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, C. Sullivan wrote: PC Club closed shop here. CompUSA has been gone for a year. PCXGEN has mutated into a cybercafe with no meaningful hardware sales to speak of. That seems to leave Best Buy way on the other end of town past the molasses-like crawl that's known as Rosedale Highway. At least I'd like to see them do something with the BIOS replacements like Coreboot. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

der Mouse wrote: Sorry, Jay, but I'm going to mention cars ;-) I always thought that x86 arch seemed more "revvy" and SPARC seemed more "torquey" if you can think of it in those terms. Something like x86 seems better for doing a couple of things very very quickly, where with a SPARC it wasn't that fast to begin with, but you can pile on the load without it slowing down. A bit like the way my mate's BMW with its 16-valve sporty engine will go like a poisoned ape but my Citroen with its 1970s tractor engine will sail past him on the first long hill... Gordon

On Oct 16, 2008, at 7:21 AM, Dan Williams wrote: Ohhhh my. :) You are going to LOVE your new machine, then. I've always loved the Ultra2; it's one of Sun's finest workstations. The UltraSPARC-II processor is a good design...but the UltraSPARC-III kicks the snot out of it. It's a whole different world. For about a year until a recent upgrade, I ran the following on a dual 900MHz UltraSPARC-III+ machine with 4GB of RAM and native FC disks, a Sun Fire 280r: - Eleven virtual machines (using Solaris "Zones" virtualization system) - An email server for about 100 people, comprising: = Incoming SMTP, 50K-70K messages per day, ~91% spam = Spam filtering (heavy REGEXP processing) = Virus scanning, for those few still running Windows = POP3, IMAP, and IMAPS spool access - Two web servers handling about thirty virtual hosts, most PHP-based - Network monitoring system - Real-time NEXRAD weather imagery processing system - A biggish (20 queries/sec) database server - Three Sun Ray thin client terminals (often running Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) - All of my software development (editing, compiling, testing) ...All on a SINGLE 4U rackmount machine with two 900MHz UltraSPARC- III+ processors (8MB L2 cache each) and 4GB of RAM. It was a bit swappy with only 4GB (450 processes in the process table, "ps" output scrolls and scrolls), but very responsive. I recently upgraded it to a dual 1.2GHz UltraSPARC-III+ machine with 8GB of RAM. Show THAT to an x86 fanboy and watch the pimply jaw drop. ;) Sun discontinued the SPARC-based desktop machines for three main reasons. First, it's very hard to make them cost-effective; they'd have to trim their margins down to the near-nothing that the PC world is accustomed to...which means they'd have to start making cheap garbage. They tried that with the unbelievably crappy non-Sun-like Ultra5 and Ultra10 machines; everyone with more than a smidgen of real computer experience poo-pooed them loudly, and Sun listened. (but apparently the Blade 100 [not 1000] was already in the pipeline, too late to axe) Second, the later UltraSPARC processors are *big*...it's not easy to make a physically small machine with those. A proc/mem module for a V480 is the size of a phone book and is definitely a two-hander. These are not "desktop" processors. Third, Sun is having great success with the Sun Ray product line. These very effectively replace standalone desktops, and are being deployed by the thousands. I use them myself here; they are fantastic. There's not much point to try to make a low-cost standalone desktop machine when they're making money (and happy customers) with the Sun Ray line. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Oct 19, 2008, at 12:52 AM, Roy J. Tellason wrote: Yes. :) Eh, life's too short to use crappy computers. It's sitting here. I suppose it's waiting for you to make me a decent swap offer. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sunday 19 October 2008 11:14, Dave McGuire wrote: Well, yeah, but being able to afford better is another matter entirely. I'm working on it... Hm. I don't know what I might have offhand that you'd consider. But we could kick that around offlist... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin