[Red Moon]

Sun Microsystems, the java people have been making Unix based workstations since computers since 1982. They are the sort of machines you would find in University's or large companies for doing research. In addition to this they also make Unix based enterprise and web-servers. Java is just a spin off from the building and supplying of machines. More recently they have become big in the open source world and the core code of open office comes from Star Office developed by Sun. For a number of years it has been offering their Solaris Operating system in x86 port for PC users.

Give you an idea of cost the list price of mine when it was new but it would have been about £3,500. It was the top of the range model of the Ultra 5 series of machines and one of the last produced. It even has a AMD coprocessor card that allows it to run windows 2000 in a window on the screen.

I got from ebay for next to nothing, upgraded the hard disk and installed the latest operating system. It is still a capable machine and great for internet use despite it relatively slow processor compared to a new PC's. One good thing is the 400MHz processor is 64-bit which speeds it all up and the kennel of the operating system has the fastest TCP/IP stack of ant operating system.