Refering to the subject. What is the difference between the two of them?

The former is a beta version of the not yet released (end 01/2005) official product.

As all beta software, Solaris Express is likely to contain bugs, missing some features that should be made available either at release time or later (e.g. Janus, ZFS), possibly having some features that won't be included at release time ...

That said, Solaris Express is fairly stable and complete yet, but:
- you're not allowed to used it in production
- its license will expire after 6 month.

Thanks.

Good thing I didn't burn those Solaris Express ISO yet. If not it would be 4 wasted discs.

You still can burn CD-RWs ...

or u just need to burn 2 CDs....the first n the last wouldn't be necessary~

What do you mean that the license will expire in 6months? Does that mean you won't be able to use it?

I doubt there's any timebombing feature, so you will technically be able to run it. However, it is a bad idea to run beta software after the offical release is available, specially when both are free ...

I even wasted 10 CDs! :-( when the next release is available, I will use CD-RWs.

I bought 4 CD-RW just to burn OS isos. So far I have done NetBSD and FreeBSD.

I still haven't recover the cost of CD-RW. 1 CD-RW = 4 CDR. So I need to reuse each CD-RW 4 times over in order to break even the cost of using CDRW instead of CDR. The plus point is, at least I don't have problem with disposing CDs enviromentally safe method.

However, is Solaris 10 released yet? www.sun.com is kinda misleading. They are trying to avoid using the word pre-release, beta, trial, release candidate, and whatever that suggest it is not the final product. I know the download page have the release code on it. (date)

I agree.
The website makes it sound like Solaris 10 is available and that is what you would be downloading.
It is only from reading elsewhere that I understand that is not the case.
Still I will be checking it out when it is really ready.

In my opinion, this is more a semantic issue than a technical one.

The Solaris express releases *are* Solaris 10, and the version that will be made available won't be the *final* product. (There is no final product before it is end-of-life, just one evolving product.)
It will just happen to be the first one being officially supported for Sun customers, and several other release will undoubtly come after (S10 month/year) that will include new features and bug fixes (if any ).

Using a Solaris Express or a Solaris official version should'nt make that much a difference to individual users when using a freely downloadable version anyway.

I guess professional users (companies) are aware that Solaris 10 is not available for production use, at least because they haven't received the distribution CDs/DVD, and also as they cannot yet buy support for it ...