[msimplay]

Originally Posted by filburt1

No offense, but it doesn't seem to be much. JSP is free to deploy with Tomcat and Apache (usually the pair of choice, although JRun is used a bit), JSP solutions are extremely scalable, vB hardly complies with all standards...

You're also forgetting that most users really could care less about a calendar, customizable FAQ, (annoying) DHTML animated menus, groupable smilie sets, customizable BB codes...they just want to get help from other users with their problems. Mostly the only feature that Sun's forums have other than their useful Duke Dollars is the [code] tag. When I've been posting at their forums for Java help, I never really have felt constrained...I mean how often do you truly use every feature of vB, IPB, phpBB, etc.?

If I was running an enterprise, I would just feel more comfortable buying a product that cost more than $160 when I knew it could be the difference between millions of dollars of revenue.

hmm thats where u'd be wrong it depends on the context of the forum itself
fair enough i don't run a large site however
a friend of mine does and those features u mentioned are in regular use on mine and his site
if smilies were not there they would definately complain.
Simply because they are standard on most forum software
also custamisable faq is admin side not user side
you only have too look at real.com and even their forums have smilies , pms , bbcode etc etc