It's still unclear whether the IBM-Sun talks might be revived.

Since the Sun board evidently rejected a roughly $7 billion offer from IBM as too low over the weekend, there have been reports that it was split into factions led on the one hand by Sun's pony-tailed CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who supposedly wanted to do the deal despite its flaws and lower price, and Sun chairman Scott McNealy, who supposedly didn't.

Bloomberg described the debate between McNealy and Schwartz as "heated."

Sun lent some weight to that story Monday - but even more weight to the idea that the talks are well and truly dead - when it sent out a statement saying, "As a policy Sun does not comment on rumors or speculation. What we can say is that Sun is committed to its leadership team, growth strategy and building value for its shareholders - with continued alignment of resources to best position the company for improved financial performance."

According to Bloomberg, the Sun board met on Wednesday to review the company's narrow band of options. Finding a replacement for IBM isn't thought to be in the cards.

Meanwhile, some of Sun's biggest stockholders were talking to their lawyers and the S&P put Sun on credit watch.

IBM was reportedly asked for guarantees that it would acquire Sun no matter what trouble the pair ran into with the regulators. Sun was supposedly willing to take a lower price of $9.55, down a dollar, in exchange for such an undertaking. IBM's post-due diligence offer was supposedly either $9.10 or $9.40.

According to Bloomberg IBM balked at paying McNealy and Schwartz three times their annual compensation for buying the company. The New York Times suggested the "change-in-control" payouts Sun demanded for these and other executives made IBM cut its bid.

The wire service said Sun, in return, balked over the control IBM wanted over Sun's projects and people before the deal closed.

There have been many obvious comparisons of Sun to Yahoo, which last year flubbed a $47.5 billion bid by Microsoft.

Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said, that "Given the size of the premium and the fact that Sun's board has presided over a decline in the company's stock price over the last eight years from over $250/share to less than $5 prior to the acquisition talks being leaked, we believe that [Sun] is likely to face significant shareholder unrest similar to what occurred when Yahoo declined Microsoft's offer."