HERE COMES THE SUN

Recently, Sun decided to turn on the heat on all its competitors by announcing that its newest OS, Solaris 10 was going to be available as a free download from January 2005. Users, they said, would only be charged for upgrades and maintenance. This offer from Sun comes a year after Red Hat made a similar offer to users everywhere.

Sun hope that this move will make its severs all the more attractive to smaller business-as well as attract more developers to write programs for the OS. We can't say whether this will actually pay off, but we can definitely share the results of a related survey carried out by Netcraft. According to Netcraft's research, Linux and Windows battle it out for a share of the Web-hosting pie while Solaris-oblivious to that battle-rules the roots when it comes to the larger corporations.

They also state: 'Solaris 43 members of the Fortune 100 in the U.S., compared to 32 companies using Windows and 12 running on Linux. Most of those enterprises continue to run Solaris 8 rather than Solaris 9, including  Sun itself (which uses Solaris 8 for its main site but also has company web sites on Solaris).' Take a look at the tables below, which list the operating systems used by some Fortune 100 ant FTSE 100 companies.

BROWSER BATTLES

We still remember a time, in the 1990s, when web browser almost always meant Netscape-and Internet Explorer was just another 'wannabe'. Sine then, the world has changed quit bit and Internet Explorer now occupies the 'Numero Uno' spot that it once converted. In fact, with Microsoft bundling IE with all of its operating systems, it almost made sure that Netscape was just a name many of us remembered with a tinge of nostalgia. But all this seems to be changing.

The Firefox browser browser, which is based on Mozilla's open source code, has slowly but surely been eating into IE's share of the pie. In the last few months, Firefox has seen a steadily growing user base, while IE seems to be losing theirs. Of course, it'll be quite some time before Firefox or Mozilla proves to be real threat, but with the tides changing as quickly as they have, we surely wouldn't want to bet on IE holding on to its sizeable lead for long.

Recently, since its launch on Nov 9, Firefox has clocked over 7 million downloads. In fact, developers of this browser are expecting a penetration of at least 10% by the end of 2005. And now to add to the woes of IE, AOL plans on releasing newer version of Netscape that's going to be based on Firefox!

By the time you read this, the newest beta version of Netscape will already be out. AOL plans on bringing out a completely new browser with an enhanced user interface, coupled with several new features. Users who're interested in trying this prototype had better register by vesting netscape .com and entering the registration code: prototype 1104. But hurry, as the beta will only be given out to a select number of testers. If  nothing else, at least this will cause the guys at Microsoft to work harder on their browser.

Call us romantics, but we definitely like idea of Netscape taking on IE once again.    

*Includes Firefox   **Includes Safari and Opera

Source: Web Side Story