I haven't used a SUN computer before.

I see a SUN Blade 150 Workstation on ebay with a 650MHz UltraSPARC IIi CPU, 512MB of ram, and Solaris 10 already installed. It has USB ports, VGA, ethernet, sound...


Do you think it would be an okay computer to do regular stuff with (Browse internet, email, mp3s, etc)?

Sure. Sun hardware is solid and stable.

It won't be the fastest box around, but it'll be nice and solid. I was using one as my workstation for a few months until we got a v250 server and I switched to a SunRay thinclient on my desktop. That config is a little low on RAM, you'd get better performance if you bump it up to 1GB.

512MB is plenty enough for browsing the net, email and playing mp3's. Unless he wants to play some demanding games, I'd say it's a waste of money and time to upgrade to 1GB with the intent described.

You can join the cool kids...
prtdiag | head
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems sun4u Sun Blade 150 (UltraSPARC-IIe 550MHz)
System clock frequency: 92 MHZ
Memory size: 384MB

==================================== CPUs ====================================
E$ CPU CPU
CPU Freq Size Implementation Mask Status Location
--- -------- ---------- --------------------- ----- ------ --------
0 550 MHz 512KB SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIe 3.3 on-line +-board/cpu0

Memory isn't cheap. I think 512MB is almost $100.

I use mine as just a workstation/gateway at work.

I've heard they take SDRAM 133 and must be ECC.

512MB Registered and Buffered seem to be around $50-$90

If it doesn't need to be ECC, it seems to be around $40-$50.

I still think 512 would be fine.

EDIT: ebay also has a couple Sun Blade 2000's with dual procs, 2GB ram, 10k RPM drives for a $100-200 more. For basic tasks it sounds a little over kill and unnecessary.

They're getting that much for ECC REG SDRAM 133? I got a stack of that crap lying around doing nothing.. ughh and last time I tried selling them no one wanted them.. double ughhh!

You can get DDR2 800 2x1GB memory for $50 and 2x2GB for $110

lol it's ridiculous.

DDR is more of a standard in newer machines, so I can understand the production of SDRAM isn't as high as it use to be but it's still overpriced in my opinion, but then again, those people are asking for too much if they're wanting $100 for it.

Not if we're still willing to pay that much. Not like you have a lot of choice if you're running one of those systems though... Amazing how fast prices change on standard RAM. Seems like only yesterday I paid $650 for 4MB to put in my good ol' 486 system