If you watch the CPU trends, the 64-bit computing has been here for years, but strangely in the commodity market of the x86 CPU, widespread adoption has not been as widespread compared to the high-end Unix and mainframe environments.
Now Microsoft are leading from the front by moving their own web servers to 64-bit CPUs - primarily to remove the memory limitations and therefore improve the speed and performance.
To show you how it is done, they've released a white paper on how it was done.
Scott Finnie has written a piece on Boot Camp, from the perspective of a regular Windows user.
As the subtitle says, he likes what he finds, but I have to provide my own comments to some of his summing at the end.
First of all is this comment:
Microsoft's customizable Start menu is in every way the analog of OS X's Apple menu, but you can't customize the Apple menu.
The Apple menu in non-OS X Apple's was always customizable, but the one in OS X isn't without additional tools. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view, but it isn't the only place for customization. One of the things I like about the Apple Menu is that it is now a menu about the OS, not just a dump point for everything that didn't have a better place to go.
After having my T2000 arrive some weeks ago, I finally managed at the beginning of the week to start porting over the Cheffy codebase to the new system.
Before I got there, I had to do the basic setup. The System Controller (SC) uses a serial cable (and one I haven't had to use for a while) to do the initial set up of an IP address, then I could log in and boot up the machine proper. Without a display, access to the console is through the SC port, and the first phase is an extensive set of tests. Then the machine resets and starts up into Solaris 10.
After having my T2000 arrive some weeks ago, I finally managed at the beginning of the week to start porting over the Cheffy codebase to the new system.
Before I got there, I had to do the basic setup. The System Controller (SC) uses a serial cable (and one I haven't had to use for a while) to do the initial set up of an IP address, then I could log in and boot up the machine proper. Without a display, access to the console is through the SC port, and the first phase is an extensive set of tests. Then the machine resets and starts up into Solaris 10.
Scott Finnie has written a piece on Boot Camp, from the perspective of a regular Windows user.
As the subtitle says, he likes what he finds, but I have to provide my own comments to some of his summing at the end.
First of all is this comment:
Microsoft's customizable Start menu is in every way the analog of OS X's Apple menu, but you can't customize the Apple menu.
The Apple menu in non-OS X Apple's was always customizable, but the one in OS X isn't without additional tools. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view, but it isn't the only place for customization. One of the things I like about the Apple Menu is that it is now a menu about the OS, not just a dump point for everything that didn't have a better place to go.
I've been using Boot Camp now for almost a week, and I apologize to those who have been waiting for my review since my original comment on the release last week.
A few key notes to begin with:
Installation is straightforward enough, even if, as on my iMac Intel Core Duo, there isn't a huge amount of free space available. I was easily able to assign the 5GB (which I upped to 10GB) to install Windows XP. Installation is as fast as you would expect, and I didn't experience any problems with the XP SP2 disc I was using as an installation source.
I've been using Boot Camp now for almost a week, and I apologize to those who have been waiting for my review since my original comment on the release last week.
A few key notes to begin with:
Installation is straightforward enough, even if, as on my iMac Intel Core Duo, there isn't a huge amount of free space available. I was easily able to assign the 5GB (which I upped to 10GB) to install Windows XP. Installation is as fast as you would expect, and I didn't experience any problems with the XP SP2 disc I was using as an installation source.
My review of the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation had made it into Issue 11 of Free Software Magazine.
Here’s a taster:
Sun have made some headlines in recent months through the release of their Ultra 20 workstation and a number of new servers based on the AMD CPUs. For some this is seen as major change of direction for a company that is well known for the use (and continued interest and development) of the SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) CPU. With so many new machines being based on the AMD CPU it will be surprising to some that Sun’s new mobile units are based on SPARC technology.
The Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation is based an 64-bit UltraSPARC CPU. There are two main models, a 15″ unit that comes with a UltraSPARC IIi CPU at 550 or 650MHz, and a 17″ model with a 1.2GHz UltraSPARC IIIi CPU. Both are standard CPUs-these are not cut down or restricted versions designed to work within a laptop-and that is a key parameter for identifying the target market for the unit.
Read the full article.
If you don’t get the vibes, I like this machine, and Solaris as a laptop operating system is pretty good too. In fact, I’ve start up a new blog, Laptop Solaris to talk about my experiences with this machine and Solaris on a laptop in general.
For the last 6 months I've been using a Sun Ultra3 Mobile Workstation as the main machine for development for Cheffy (and more recently using the T2000 for actual deployment testing).
The Ultra3 is a superb little workstation, but definitely not a laptop,
One of the key benefits of this machine is that it is completely SPARC compatible - you can move binaries from the Ultra3 and run them on a SPARC server, for example the T2000, without having to recompile or redevelop the project.
For an engineer visiting sites, this machine would be ideal as you could use the software and utilities and copy them over with ease. For a developer, it certainly lowers the normal barriers of entry to be able to build and compile applications that can be deployed straight from the laptop to your servers.