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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!hscfvax!pavlov
From: pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Boycott Apple Again -- Now about Suns
Message-ID: <621@hscfvax.harvard.edu>
Date: 16 Sep 88 04:09:10 GMT
References: <358@island.uu.net> <626@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <406@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Organization: Health Sciences Computing Facility, Harvard University
Lines: 40

In article <406@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>, hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes:
> You might start by reading the sun-spots digest - you'll see enough bug
> reports to make your eyes bug out...... 
> Lots and lots of problems, no single one of which renders a Sun totally
> unusable, but altogether adding up to too many headaches.... 

  I would not base a decision on whether to buy a Sun on this.  One should
  know/understand that:
 
    1. many reported "bugs" and problems filter out as improper installations,
       configurations, etc.  This may be a commentary on quality of the docu-
       mentation, but there is nothing unusual about Sun's;
    2. In my experience, Sun users/owners are more likely to utilize third-party
       hardware than users/owners of other vendors' machines.  It is almost
       inevitable that one will eventually encounter problems relating to this
       fact alone;
    3. Suns are frequently networked to other vendors' machines through still
       other vendors' comm. equipment.  Problems arise in interoperability.
       Sun users/owners typically find that they can tackle the problems more
       easily from the Sun side than from the other vendors' side;
    4. The sun-spots digest is much more active than other manufacture-speci-
       fic groups, which relates in part to the technical level of people who
       up to now have formed one of the primary markets for Sun.  I don't see
       the percentage of "problem" messages to total messages in that group
       to be significantly higher than in other manufacture groups.  But there
       is certainly much more traffic overall.

 For several years, our site utilized a cpu from a vendor with an excellent
 reputation for quality and support.  This vendor was conscientious enough to
 publish a quarterly book, containing the 100's of known bugs, there status
 and disposition.  A casual glance at this volume would convince someone that
 the system was virtually unusable.  But even tho it was used for applications
 development, we rarely encountered a reported problem.

 Sun's systems my suffer from more bugs than usual.  I have used a Sun, know
 a number of people who own one or more, and have not seen anything that would
 validate a claim of severe flakiness.

  greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny.