A fairly cogent article from Internetnews.com on why Jonathan Schwartz can’t have been expected to fix Sun’s problems in as little time as he’s had, since the company is still plodding along in the wake of bad choices made in the ’90s. An “If I Were Sun” post on Dzone from Adam Bein sums up the problems nicely: the company expects to give away software as a hook to get people to buy hardware, but the software, while awesome and popular (thinking Java here), doesn’t lead naturally to the hardware, and it isn’t even particularly obvious how one lays their hands on the hardware at times. Bein has an intriguing idea: “I would try to create a Java-Branded Workstation, just for developers, and place it somewhere prominently, or at least make the existing one more visible. With virtualBox, Ubuntu / openSolaris / Windows this could probably take off. I would actually buy one. I think there are enough Java-enthusiasts out there, so that this could pay-off.” It’s probably a more realistic idea than my “Java Electronic Machine” concept. What say ye, developers? Would you pay for a fully-loaded Sun Java development station, or will you just keep downloading stuff for free onto your white box? Software Development