I read David Coursey's commentary in the April 21 issue of Computerworld [``What keeps Sun awake at night?''], and I think the people at Sun need to wake up. They have a golden opportunity to make some inroads against Microsoft, and they're missing it. The questions they are asking show just how out of touch they are. What's keeping Microsoft on the desktop (and pulling them to the server side) isn't application programming interfaces or technology, it's the applications of Microsoft Office, mostly.

If Sun could come up with a competitive office suite and provide a top-notch development studio and tools for third-party developers, you'd probably see Bill Gates starting to think about retirement.

I've developed extensively in both Unix and NT. Unix, by far, is better on the server side.

But most people will want Windows for the desktop. Java, the Internet and network computers present a new user/interface paradigm, and it's going to take a concentrated effort by a major Unix vendor such as Sun to provide the applications to make people want something besides Windows in their homes and offices.

Chris Scott - Stoughton, Mass.

Source: ComputerWorld