Rumor has it that Sun Microsystems Inc has as yet only delivered limited quantities of its newfangled JavaStation NCs to major customers, and that none of the elect, who got them so they could develop applications, have had more than a handful of the machines. Companies, nay, developers, have tried to buy the things to no avail, according to our sister paper OnLine Reporter. The gating factor, sources say, is the state of the JavaOS and its performance at least on the microSparc II RISCs used in JavaStations. JavaOS is officially at rev 1.0, which you have to be one of the 25 JavaSoft licensees to see, but JavaSoft is said to be making regular code drops of what people refer to as 1.1, and they say the thing has showed performance improvements since JavaStation was announced in October. But not enough, apparently, to get JavaStation out of the blocks, much to the chagrin of Sun’s hardware arm Sun Microsystems Computer Company which contributed the device – which is now complete – and is expected to sell it. Reportedly there is tension between the two Sun planets, and exasperation on the SMCC side. Anything resembling volume deliveries – and everyone complains that getting straight dope from Sun is impossible – now appears to have been pushed into late summer and a year between announcement and delivery is an eternity in internet time. What some people call the second JavaOS, which we take to be JavaOS 1.2, is reportedly scheduled for late summer and will add features like extra graphics. There is still no telling when it might carry a JIT compiler. Interestingly, licensees we spoke to who are running JavaOS on Intel Corp processors have no criticism of JavaOS’ performance – only its girth. JavaSoft is working to slim the thing down into less than 2Mb. Some licensees are lopping off pieces deemed unecessary to their requirements. JavaStation marketing manager Steve Tirado declined to comment.
