Sun Microsystems this week has gone through one of its sweeping product upgrades, freshening up its Opteron, SPARC and thin client lines.

On the Opteron front, Sun has made the latest and greatest 156, 256 and 856 processors from AMD available. That gives Sun's server and workstation customers access to the 3.0GHz flavor of Opteron in addition to the older 2.6GHz chip.

The T1000 box starts at $2,995, while the beefier T2000 starts at $7,795.

Sun has also confirmed the release date for the UltraSPARC T1 successor - the UltraSPARC T2. The chip has taped out and should ship in boxes by the second half of 2007.

The company promised the UltraSPARC T2 will have double the performance of the UltraSPARC T1 and fit into multi-processor servers. Of course, we told you all this and more last year.

The server maker continues to hawk thin clients as well and has chucked out two new products. Customers will find the Sun Ray 2 and Sun Ray 2FS systems for $249 and $499, respectively. The Sun Ray 2 is much smaller than previous models, while the 2FS system has special security tools such as a fiber optic network port for avoiding Ethernet.

While Sun talks a good game with these products, some customers are struggling to get the company to deliver the gear. ®

Related stories

• Sun introduces first Intel workstation in two decades (23 October 2007)
• Exclusive Start-up could kick Opteron into overdrive (21 April 2006)
• Investors practice tough love with AMD (13 April 2006)
• Opteron carries AMD to banner Q1 (12 April 2006)
• Sun opens modeling tools (12 April 2006)
• Former Sun exec eviscerates McNealy (11 April 2006)
• Sun sends SPARC team members packing (7 April 2006)