RE: douglas dooley

"....i just don't see why Sun thinks an OS is so mission-critical for a competitive advantage? do you?...." It's all about support and services revenue - if you can persuade customers that your proprietary OS and hardware has some business advantage they will buy it, and if you can then convince them only you have the skills and knowledge to support them then you can charge them a steep rate. This is what fuelled commercial UNIX and the mainframe bizz. Linux changed all that - suddenly, the vendors had to try a lot harder to differentiate. Sun has left it too late and doesn't have the ability to differentiate on x86 with Linux or Windows. Their SPARC bizz is dead on its feet, having been out-innovated in the enterprise UNIX market by Itanium and Power. And don't mention their farcial entry into the storage market! So Sun are desperate to try and create an aura of mystical capability around Solaris x86 as a last chance of securing some form of proprietary and therefore controllable revenue stream.