A Real Computer...

Most home computer geeks these days seem to have a PC (or to be more derogatory, peecee), running a crappy excuse for an OS, like Windoze. To me, these machines are a waste of space, best suited for the junk pile. Peecees running a real OS (read: one of the UNIX variants, preferably Solaris) have a little more credibility (anything to break Bill Gates' stranglehold on the software market is a Good Thing - where else but Micro$oft is technical incompetence and marketing prowess so successful?) but in my eyes, a Real Computer is nothing less than a UNIX workstation, driven by some sort of RISC processor (preferably SPARC). Workstations based on AMD's Opteron processor also seem to be quite promising. Provided they're running UNIX, of course...

A workstation needn't be an expensive, high end box: these days used workstations can be had for very reasonable prices, say a few hundred bucks for a complete system. Even Sun's workstations start at under $1500.

I have a personal preference for Sun workstations, which is why I've currently got nine of 'em! Pride of place goes to my dual-450 Mhz CPU Ultra 60, which has 2 GB of RAM, two 9 GB 10K RPM SCSI disks, and a pair of Creator 3D Series 3 frame buffers (each of which is displayed on a 21" Sun monitor). I also have a Sun Blade 100 (which is Jenny's primary machine), a pair of Ultra 1s, a SPARCstation 20, a pair of SPARCstation 2s, a Voyager, and my trusty old Sun 3/80. The latter was the last of Sun's 68030 based workstations, and was my first Real Computer. My 3/80 is currently in /dev/storage/box, as I don't have room to keep it out currently. But I'm hanging onto it for nostalgia reasons.

Before I got my workstations, I struggled with an Atari 1040ST, and a BBC Micro - the latter being the best of their generation, IMHO. Yep, I'm proud to say that I've never owned a peecee, and I don't plan to either (although Sun's Opteron based workstations are tempting...).