They may have arrived onto the marketplace some two years late, but Sun Microsystems is finally able to boast of a large scale deployment of its thin client JavaStations.
The University of Western Ontario has deployed 250 JavaStations and two Sun Enterprise 450 servers in its DB Weldon library, following a four month pilot program. They were bought as an alternative to PCs, and are being used for internet access, library reference systems, catalogues and e-mail. The University actually first tried out 10 JavaStations in two of its other libraries at the start of 1998. The newly renovated DW Weldon library had its grand opening on Friday, complete with a Sun Microsystems Java Knowledge Center.
Corona, a new version of the JavaStation, is due to be released shortly. It has a subtly different architecture to the current JavaStation, according to Sun CEO Scott McNealy, who revealed the existence of the new machine earlier this year.
