mcdonald@loki.pmel.edsg.hac.COM (louis mcdonald) (04/23/89)
[ I am not responsible for spelling, tense, etc... ] I have had enought with the SUN <=> Apollo/HP wars... Can we stick to technical questions..... Now I will be a hypocrite and give my two cents worth... 1) I think saying `My company is better than your company' is rather UNprofessional. Come on, every company has good points and bad points... No one is perfect, EVEN SUN... 2) I would hope a SUN employee would stick up for SUN and an Apollo employee would stick up for Apollo, that is human nature. If a SUN employee were to brag about Apollo, I would wonder `why do they work for SUN?'. The reverse would also be true... 3) I feel the only (somewhat) fair opinions would be those of customers who have been exposed to BOTH products (at least). As a customer, I have not been exposed to SUN, so I have nothing to offer as to `who is better'. However, I have been exposed to other systems, and I can safely say `THEY ALL HAVE GOOD POINTS'. As long as I can get my work done in an efficient manner, I am happy with the system.... 4) My experience has been that whatever environment a user starts out in, this is usually the preferred system. I know MANY VAX/VMS users who HATE Apollo and SUN because it is not VMS. I know MANY Apollo users who hate SUN and VAX because it is not Aegis. I know MANY SUN users who hate VAX and Apollo because it is not UNIX (or at least REAL unix) (of course, this may not be the case for IBM users) 5) I have always felt that universities have a big impact on the direction of the market. By this I mean that if they only teach UNIX OS, then when the students graduate, employers will begin a transition to UNIX. Since SUN is `the UNIX host' the market swings in their favor. I based this on the direction that programming languages have gone. I entered school on the ending of FORTRAN and the graduated when Pascal was HOT!!. Later, C was the dominate language being taught in school. (is ADA next) If Aegis would have caught on, would Apollo be at the forefront? 6) As a customer, PRICE is a big factor, as well as the tools available. That can be the primary reason for chosing one platform over another (NOT how many employees they have) I guess that is all I can come up with for now. I assume I will get blasted by some of you out there, so I will forward my mail to /dev/null :-) I am not making these statements to continue this nuclear flame war. Instead, I hope to see it end. My goals were to point out that employees from the companies involved will stand by their companies (and they should, otherwise why stay). As a customer (where both products are used), I am happy with Apollo, and for the amount of UNIX level programming I do (and many other users also) Apollo's UNIX is good enough for me (please I do not want to hear about its limitations) I am sure SUN is a fine product and deserves all the praise it gets. In closing, I would hope the market is big enough for everyone to be successful. Both SUN and Apollo have GOOD talent that should not be wasted. The only comment I have about HP is that they must be a great company since they always seem to be one of the top three companies to work for (based on EE times and other pubs). Apollo employees are fortunate to work with HP. As for being bought by another company, hey, we were bought by GM but I still seem to be doing the same stuff before the buy out... Louis McDonald - my opinions Hughes Aircraft -the company with one of everything
jmd@swbatl.UUCP (03) (04/25/89)
In article <8904221838.AA05430@loki.pmel.edsg.hac.com> mcdonald@loki.pmel.edsg.hac.COM (louis mcdonald) writes: > >3) I feel the only (somewhat) fair opinions would be those > of customers who have been exposed to BOTH products (at least). > Good point anything else is pure opinion. > As a customer, I have not been exposed to SUN, so I have > nothing to offer as to `who is better'. However, I have > been exposed to other systems, and I can safely say > `THEY ALL HAVE GOOD POINTS'. Once Again you hit the mark as a customer I have both systems(several of each) and they both do certain things well. 1. Apollo does networking in a superior model, I don't have to mount things unless they are foreign. 2. The use of a network root directory is superior from a developers perspective. 1. Sun offers greater portability of software to the platform, and since much of our work is of a research nature it is easy for us to evaluate software in the public domain on the Sun much quicker. 2. It has been our experience that software support (on technical issues is much better on the Sun.) sometimes calling the 800 number can be extremely frustrating. This is not all inclusive but just some quickies, I am not trying to debate which is better (or worse) only pointing out that arguing such points are less than an academic exercise. -- James M Doherty - SWBT - Advanced Technology Planning One Bell Center Room 11-Y-03 St. Louis, Mo. 63101 UUCP: { pyramid, ihnp4, bellcore }...!swbatl!jmd PHON: 314-235-0804 FAX: 314-235-0727