I ran a large Java Users Group for several years when Java was part of Sun Micro and a handful of years after the transition to Oracle. I used to get swag for my members and did giveaways at meetings. I can say that Sun sent me jackets, shirts, books, you name it - once it turned over to Oracle, I had a hard time getting much.
> I can say that Sun sent me jackets, shirts, books, you name it - once it turned over to Oracle, I had a hard time getting much.
It seems like Sun just had a ton of swag. I was at a TopCoder event and chatted with a Sun rep who was fiddling with his laptop; I noted he had a neat USB hub with a Sun logo on it (pretty small, but I think it might only do usb 1), and he gave it to me. I suspect there was an overflowing bin of them back at the office.
The best Sun swag I ever got was the leather Java jacket. I wore it once on a subway and kept getting asked how to get one by Java coders so I gave it away to a coworker for my peace of mind and privacy. EDIT: I wasn't even a Java coder at that time - I was sysadmin on Solaris machines, but swag is swag.
I acquired a Sun mug and card deck from a discard pile at an internship about 7 years ago, a few years after the acquisition by Oracle. Also in the pile was a mug with the pre-merger/acquisition Broadcom big sinc function logo. Glad to see this post that I'm not alone with a small collection of vintage tech swag. (Now I just need to find a Wang Laboratories bag like an older prof proudly carried around...)
