[SunRescue] Q: Regarding Sun Educator promo Ultra 5 system

[Pres. Dan Jameyson]

I took up Sun on their education discount about this time last year. I'm
very happy with the Ultra 5 I got... does 24b color at 1152x900, great
as a general word processing workstationish machine. I also use it as a
general unix system for the usual services and a small dbase (yes,
genuine old school dbase) setup.

If you're into programming (I'm only a hobbist-level programmer), I
suppose the sparcv9 64bit arch would be fun.

It is an awesome deal... however:

1) I got the 333mhz with the larger cache rather than the 360mhz with
the tiny cache. At these speeds, cache is a lot more significant than a
mere 27 mhz. If they still offer the 333, try and get that.

2) The IDE disks really suck up performance potential. I haven't had the
time to do it yet, but the system would seriously FLY with UW SCSI. It
wouldn't be a cheap upgrade, and you'd have to plan on using mostly
external scsi stuff.

I had always wanted to go in with Sun's more modern equipment since the
UltraSPARC came about. Getting this Ultra 5 changed my life for the
better; it introduced me to a world beyond the Linux/BSD PC and got me
hooked on Solaris for good.

I'm not one to make emotionally based decisions... but having your own
Ultra 5 is one of those little extra things you can feel good about when
you wake up in the morning. ;)

-Dan

-- 
Dan Jameyson (jameyson at amist.org)                    www.amist.org
President and Chairman of the Board of Directors
American Institute of Science and Technology          PO BOX 27934
A California Public Benefit Corporation     Concord, CA 94527-0934