Sun Celebrates Extraordinary Success of Sun Ultra 5 Workstations; Will Reward Five Early Customers Through 'Find the Fives' Promotion
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate the retirement of the world's best selling UNIX® workstation ever, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - news) today announced the Sun Ultra Upgrade Program, offering special discounts to Sun Ultra(tm) workstation owners who upgrade to Sun's faster, more powerful line of Sun Blade workstations.
Sun also announced a companion campaign dubbed "Find the Fives," a special promotion that sets out to locate five Sun Ultra 5 workstations in the first group of workstations sold. Lucky customers, with the serial numbers listed below will be rewarded with a free, fully-loaded Sun(TM) Blade 100 workstation package.
"The Sun Ultra 5 workstation has been the best selling UNIX workstation ever because customers prize the high standards we set for price/performance," said Fred Kohout, director of marketing of Client and Technical Market Products at Sun Microsystems. "With our new Sun Blade workstations, we've further raised the performance bar while dramatically lowering the price bar, providing the robust, highly scalable 64-bit Sun platform at PC price points. We've brought to market the desktop solutions that our customers need, which is why Sun Microsystems holds more of the 64-bit workstation market than all of our competitors combined."
Sun Blade Workstations at Reduced Prices
The Sun Ultra Upgrade Program provides extra discounts to those who trade in their older Sun Ultra 5, 10, 60 or 80 workstations for one of Sun's newer, more powerful Sun Blade 100 and Sun Blade 1000 workstations.
Introduced in September 2000, the Sun Blade 1000 workstation offers a powerful, high-end 3D graphics workstation -- featuring twice the performance, memory and disk capacity of existing UltraSPARC II systems -- at affordable price points.
And earlier this year, Sun unveiled the Sun Blade 100 workstation, its new entry-level system that remains the only 64-bit, 3D graphics workstation priced under $1,000 without a monitor. With significantly better performance -- at about half the cost -- the Sun Blade 100 workstation has provided customers with the ideal follow-on to Sun's Ultra 5 2D graphics workstation.
For additional information on Sun's Ultra Upgrade Program, customers should contact their Sun Microsystems' reseller or sales representative, or go to http://www.sun.com/desktop.
Sun Rewards Five Early Sun Ultra 5 Workstation Customers
Sun is celebrating the huge success of the Sun Ultra 5 workstation -- and saluting five of its first customers -- through a special promotion called "Find the Fives." Customers whose Sun Ultra 5 workstations have one of the five serial numbers below can trade in their workstation free of charge, for a Sun Blade 100 system that includes 40 GB of storage, 2 GB of memory, the Sun(TM) Expert3D-Lite Graphics board, and an 18-inch flat panel monitor from Sun. The five serial numbers are:
- FW81008413
- FW80704047
- FW81212912
- TW80701882
- TW80802492
The Sun Ultra 5 workstation was introduced in January 1998 with an aggressive price of $2,995 without a monitor. Since then, the technical computing workhorse has sold more than all competitive UNIX workstations worldwide combined. Sun has now scheduled the retirement of the Ultra 5 workstation for early 2002 to make room for the soaring sales of Sun's more powerful and affordable Sun Blade 100 workstation.
For more details regarding Sun's hunt for early Ultra 5 workstations, customers can go to http://www.sun.com/desktop and click on the "Find the Fives Program" link. Sun employees and resellers are not eligible. Complete Rules are available at the web site.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- The Network Is The Computer(TM) -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
NOTE: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.
CONTACT: Frank E. Smith of Sun Microsystems, Inc., +1-650-786-7215, or Email Contact; or Michelle Parkinson of Alexander Ogilvy, +1-310-407-7821, or Email Contact, for Sun Microsystems.