Sun Microsystems Inc’s JavaSoft unit is riding to the rescue of those fearing themselves left out of the Java hypefest because they use a 80486 machine or something even older. The company is writing versions of JavaOS, the Java virtual machine and HotJava Views for MS-DOS, and was demonstrating a prototype, codenamed Project Rescue at the Demo 97 conference in Indian Wells, California yesterday. The products themselves are due to be announced at Sun’s JavaOne show in San Francisco in early April. JavaSoft said the products might even be sold through retail channels costing around $100 when they arrive, some time before the year-end. JavaOS is a necessary addition to MS-DOS as it adds the networking functions the old operating system lacks. HotJava Views would be the development environment and the virtual machine would enable any Java applet to be executed. The machine would still run Windows applications of course, but the thinking is that many users have computers that are too slow to run Java stuff in Windows, having to run a fairly fat browser atop an equally fat operating system, Windows 3.1.
