How about ftp or e-mail?

Alacrity! Alacrity!

Part of the bottleneck is, I'm part of a big corporation and as such have to share Internet access with many co-workers. I also have to share access to SunWorld Online with all your other subscribers. When SunWorld was a magazine, I didn't have to share it real-time with anyone. I could read my own copy.

My time is at a premium. I can't afford to be wasting it waiting for Web pages to come up. (My boss has the same the perspective.) It's extremely difficult to keep current on what is going on in the computer industry. Things change rapidly and there is a glut of information out there. I need to be able to look at things quickly and discard the chaff at my convenience. I'll view SunWorld Online when I have to and can afford the time. In my job I don't have much choice. But in SunWorld's current state it's not making my job any easier.

So congratulations to those who decided on making SunWorld more efficient by going on-line. They are missing the whole point of trying to get information out easily to their customer base and their potential customer base. The efficiency is at the wrong end! This point obviously got discarded along with the notion that computers are supposed to make us more productive by making our jobs easier and not create another way to waste time!

The staff of Advanced Systems has my sympathy.

--Henry E. Alubowicz, Lockheed Martin

Going online cut our cost of doing business by 75 percent because we don't buy paper and postage stamps. Using paper, we lost money. We didn't go online to transfer efficiency or because we've bought the bill of goods sold to Internet surfers and skimmers, but because it was Web or die.

It's inconvenient for our readers to have to fire up the browser, no matter what. We know that, and we're doing what we can to make the magazine easy to use, navigate, and print articles from (we don't expect everyone to read everything online).

Meanwhile, Sun is delighted at the jump in traffic to http://www.sun.com and is increasing its resources. Sun plans to add four servers and a T3 line. If Sun can stay ahead of the demand, SunWorld Online should become snappy enough to check out even at peak hours.

We write about Sun, but don't work for Sun, Part 1

I looked all around your web site for info on courses/classes Sun offers in Unix. Couldn't find any, so you get this. Please point me in the correct direction.

--hal (Firm indeterminate)

Send your questions regarding SunWorld Online to webmaster@sunworld.com, and your questions about Sun's home page to webmaster@sun.com.

We write about Sun, but don't work for Sun, Part 2

I am saddened that you have lost your balanced and less biased viewpoints of the Advanced Systems magazine and seem to have turned back into a shill for Sun Computers. It is a sad day to see journalistic integrity lost.

I enjoyed reading your cross-industry reviews of servers and workstations, but that appears to be lost in your move to Sun's back pocket.

If you decide to become an independent industry review-based journal again please let me know.

--Scott Williams, Digital Equipment Corp.

We have had to change our mission to focus on Sun users; that's a loss for DEC-centric sites, which is regrettable. Perhaps one day IDG will again offer a magazine focussed on the needs of DEC users. Meanwhile, you'll appreciate that some articles in SunWorld Online are quite relevant to non-Sun users as well as the Sun community.

Nevertheless, SunWorld Online is no more a shill for Sun than it was when it was SunWorld the print magazine, nor is our journalistic integrity any more at issue. We have narrowed our scope to avoid such issues, but that doesn't mean we've joined the marketing department at Sun. (If Sun wanted a shill, it would have been cheaper for its marketing department to do this themselves.)

We hope you'll give us a glance now and then; maybe you'll come to agree.

Job well done

I stumbled onto your Web site today for the first time. I just wanted you to know that I spent more time browsing your articles than I have spent at any (other) Web site.
--Jeff Porter, via CompuServe

If you have problems with this magazine, contact webmaster@sunworld.com

URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-08-1995/swol-08-letters.html
Last updated: 1 August 1995

If you have technical problems with this magazine, contact webmaster@sunworld.com

URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-08-1995/swol-08-letters.html
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