This Old SPARC
The story of a man and his Sun SPARCstations (and an Ultra), and the trials, tribulations, and victories that go with the care and feeding of such a menagerie.
Friday, August 25, 2000
Oh, I also tried something pretty cool today, since I had some time on my hands. I dialed into my company from my WinProxy computer (a Windows box) using the 56kbps modem in the box. This box acts as a gateway for the rest of my network. I then went to Sparky and telnet'ed to our development box at work. It worked like a charm! It shouldn't surprise me at all, and I'm surprised it took me this long to think of it. It will be much more convenient to work (or handle the occasional support call) from home occasionally, now that I can run a nice, big telnet session under Unix, rather than under the crappy 24-line telnet that comes with Windows. Next I'm going to try running an X application (like perfmon) over the dial-up connection, just to see how well (or badly) it works.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/25/2000 10:22:08 PM
It's been a few days now, and IE 4.0 has proven to be fairly stable, excepting a couple of lock-ups. I use it all the time now, even to post my blog entries.
I just received a remote for Sparky's monitor that I won from eBay. What a great monitor, but what a goofy idea -- "yeah, let's put all the controls on a remote!". Why? Remotes get lost, and besides, how often do I need to adjust the focus on my monitor from across the room? Anyway, all is well now. There's even a little slot at the bottom of the monitor fascia to hold the remote.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/25/2000 10:14:15 PM
Monday, August 21, 2000
OK, it seemed to work that time, and IE 4.0 has been running longer than IE 5.0 ever did. Maybe I'm out of the woods?
posted by Mike Thomas 8/21/2000 09:45:25 PM
The previous post worked, but the publish step didn't. It looks as though IE tried to create the FTP login dialog required to actually publish my comments, but didn't draw it right. It came out all screwy. I tried to resize it so I could fill it in, but when I did that it crashed. What a piece of crap!
I'll try to post this first, then publish.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/21/2000 09:42:41 PM
OK, I'm posting this using Internet Explorer 4.0. I figured maybe it was a little better tested than 5.0. So far so good, but 4.0's handling of CSS leaves a bit to be desired. Whatever, it works better than Netscape. I would like to have tried Netscape 6.0, but they don't have it for the Solaris platform. Damn.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/21/2000 09:37:14 PM
Web Browsing -- Not! After a couple of hours messing about with Internet Explorer for Solaris, I've given up on it. It locks up pretty reliably after about 10 minutes of use. If only it could work reliably, rather than breaking reliably. I've basically given up hope of doing any significant Web browsing on Sparky, for now. Netscape is too slow and stupid (e.g. if I resize the browser window, it round-trips to the server again and re-renders the page), and has crappy support for the things that make pages look good (CSS). IE does most things right, but can't seem to run for more than 10 minutes. Sigh. If only Opera for Solaris was available -- maybe then I'd find joy.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/21/2000 07:29:15 AM
Sunday, August 20, 2000
OK, third try now. What am I talking about? Well, Netscape is just too unusable to continue using, so I finally gave in and installed Internet Explorer for Solaris on Sparky. After what seemed to be a successful install, I was writing a blog about how much better IE is than Netscape, when IE locked up on me tight as a drum. I started again, and it locked up again. I started again, and it locked up just trying to render the blogger site. So I rebooted Sparky (horrors), and have started again. IE, in terms of usability and rendering, beats the pants off Netscape Navigator. However, if it's going to keep locking up on me, well that's another matter. I'm going to post this now, just to be safe.
OK, the post worked. Let me count the ways that IE is better than Navigator (under Solaris, at least):
- Important: I can actually post something from blogger, which I can't do reliably on Netscape.
- Better rendering
- Sites just look better. For example, the Post-entry page on blogger looks right
- Better fonts
- More flexible font sizing
- Better support for CSS
- Comes with better fonts
- I'm used to it.
Now if I can just prevent IE from crashing, I'll be in business. I'll keep you posted.
posted by Mike Thomas 8/20/2000 09:42:35 AM
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