[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Michael Parson]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 10:30:16AM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> From: Mark <md.benson at gmail.com>
>> Date: 2007/04/14 Sat AM 10:24:43 CDT
>> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [rescue] replacing an Ultra2
>
>> On 14 Apr 2007, at 02:04, Steve Sandau wrote:
>>
>>> Basically I'd like a faster main workstation that is not PeeCee
>>> crap. I have to deal with Dells and such all too often.
>>>
>>> Suggestions or opinions?
>>
>> You could buy a Mac Pro, Solaris 10 runs really nicely in Parallels
>> if you have sufficient RAM, as long as you don't mind sacrificing
>> your OpenGL support. That said OS X itself supports a large rage of
>> Open Source stuff so you wouldn't be totally out of it. I haven't had
>> success booting Solaris 10 as yet but as and when Sun start rolling
>> out Intel hardware then EFI support will roll out with Solaris 10 at
>> the same time.
>>
>> I know, it wasn't what you wanted to hear, but I had to drop it in as
>> a very satisfied Mac Pro user :o)
>
> Actually, a MacBook might be a nice desktop - you can run Solaris in
> Parallels (or VMWare under Apple Boot Camp WinXP), and have a portable
> solution to boot... It could be an interesting way to go...

I use Parallels, but VMWare is avail (still in Beta) for Mac:

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/

> I am quite fond of my MacBook Pro, but it is a bit out of your target
> price range (closer to $1,500 that $1,000), but MacBooks are $1,000
> and up new, IIRC...

I got a Black MacBook (2 Ghz, 2 Gigs RAM, 120 Gig HD) back in February.
With AppleCare, Toast 8 Titanium, and a year of .Mac, and my corp
discount, I forked out just shy of $2300.  The only reason I got the
extended memory was because I knew I was going to be using some sort of
virtualization on it (I hadn't decided if it was going to be Parallels,
VMWare, or something else just yet).  Otherwise, the stock ram (1 Gig)
would have probably been plenty.

I've not run Solaris under Paralles yet, but I do have Linux (RH FC6)
and Windows (W2k and WXP) VMs set up for testing and dev work.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org