Sun Upgrade Plan Gives Customers Credit

Sun has announced a trade-in plan that will give customers upgrading from legacy Sun systems a 20 percent credit when they migrate to Sun Blade 1500 or 2500 workstations.

Available until June 30, the trade-in allowances are an attempt by Sun to drive customers to upgrade their older machines. Depending on the Sun Blade purchased, the credits range from $599 to $1,679, the company said late Tuesday.

The Sun Blade 1500, with pricing starting at $2,995 before any trade-in credit is applied, supports both 32- and 64-bit applications, and according to Sun, is more than 30 percent cheaper than rival HP's Itanium-based zx2000. It runs a 1GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processor.

The 2500 workstation, meanwhile, can be packed with up to two 64-bit 1.28GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processors and costs $4,995 and up.

More details of the trade-in program can be found on Sun's Web site.