To be fair, Sun outlasted its market; the problem was that *nix desktop companies were targeting $10K "3M" workstations and ignoring the PC market (which offere

To be fair, Sun outlasted its market; the problem was that *nix desktop companies were targeting $10K "3M" workstations and ignoring the PC market (which offered a tenth of the capability at a tenth of the price). When consumer machines caught up and replaced technical and academic workstations, Microsoft was able to grow with the market, while Sun, SGI, etc. didn't have the same opportunity to "grow down." That left Sun dependent on the server market, and exposed to the first dot-com collapse and subsequent glut of used mid- and high-end systems on the aftermarket.