Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 18:03:42 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "dannyman" <dannyman@toldme.com>, "Linh Pham" <lplist@closedsrc.org> Cc: "Karun" <karun@dambiec.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: IE for Solaris on FreeBSD Message-ID: <000201c12c38$9e24ff20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010822175922.W40894@toldme.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of dannyman >Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 5:59 PM > >It has been explained to me that the only reason the Solaris port exists >is to prove to the Justice Department that IE can not realistically be >ported to Unix. > No, that has nothing to do with it whatsover. The real problem is one of those in commercial Windows software development that everyone knows about but they all pretend doesen't exist. Simply put, 1 or 2GB of _ram_ is standard issue for Microsoft to their developers. You may think that 50MB is a lot of ram for an application to take, but I've done a few tours of duty administering at software development companies and I'm very familiar with the drill. At all of the major Windows ISV's it's all the same - when it comes to hardware, what the software developers want they get. I've had it explained to me that the reason for this is that the developers are working on "next generation" code and thus have to stay "one step ahead" of the average hardware platform that the users have. When I then pointed out that the code produced would likely run unacceptably slow on the hardware that people own, I was told that "that's OK by the time that the product is released they will have upgraded to faster hardware" It's basically pointless to argue because your faced with a group of technical people who have figured out that the company they work for is so dependent on what they do that the company will spill it's coffers open for whatever the latest toy is that comes down the pike, no matter how rediculous and impractical it is. I challenge you to go into any major commercial Windows software publisher today and find me ONE Pentium 60 with 16MB of ram running Windows 95 in their _testlab_. The Windows applications being tested today for release are being developed and tested on hardware that is in some cases 20-50 times more powerful than what is in the real world. What happens then is so predictible that you could cry - all of the developers and testers stand around patting themselves on the back with how great the application runs, ignoring that the system it's running on is something out of Star Trek that the average mortal couldn't possibly afford, and that no other application is running on it. This is the environment that produced Internet Explorer for the Sparc. It's no wonder that you found it to be a pig. I'm sure it runs plenty fast on the SparcServer with 10 CPU's and 10GB of ram that it was developed on. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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