When the WSJ said the main attraction of the NC was "centralized control over their workers' computing resources", that does not mean everything runs on the server. Also, the expressed purpose of the centralized control of client workstations is not to prevent unauthorized personal pursuits like games; albeit that may well be a hidden agenda for many organizations. The main purpose is to reduce drastically the costs of administering client workstations. Networked PCs drive organizations crazy with high support requirements.
You are correct that the main difference between a NC and either a Windows Terminal or an X-Terminal is that the former executes instructions locally while the latter two depend strictly on the server for processing. This difference may not be noticeable for a few terminals connected to a server over a LAN, but can be a show-stopper when trying to scale up or go remote.
Even on a LAN, a large number of, say, Windows Terminals would cause network congestion, demand huge server memory (reduced somewhat with routines that can share memory) and lots of CPU power to handle all the required processing. Remote applications crawl without high bandwidth to adequately handle all the display bitmaps.
Once a NC downloads a Java Applet, which is just a few kilobytes of characters, the NC quickly compiles (or simply starts interpreting) the code, and the applet can be run fast and responsive to the users interactions - without any contact whatsoever with the server - just like a PC.
There are two fundamental problems which will limit NC usefulness for a couple of years:
(1) There aren't many serious Java applications available for prime time, e.g. word processing and spreadsheets.
(2) All that legacy code in organizations cannot, or will not, be converted anytime soon to Java. NCs need to be able to execute that code before they can be serious replacements for PCs. Until then, NCs can only complement PCs.
The solution to the first limitation is time. Lots of software developers are racing to get needed Java applications to market. The solution to the second limitation is exotic. Oracle plans to enable organizations to package legacy applications in an object wrapper, forming cartridges, that can be accessed through Java. All the objects will be reachable through CORBA object management procedures. I suspect that the actual execution of the application will remain on the server, but a message passing mechanism will channel interaction between the NC Java client and the legacy application. If I am right, then the corporate NC will be a hybrid, lying between a pure NC and a Windows Terminal. As more and more applications convert to Java, NC performance will improve.
The NC used by the consumer would be pure from the get-go because there aren't any, or many, consumer legacy applications that need to be wrapped.
>>What about Sun?<<
Sun's role in the NC is peripheral, much like WIND's. They both can expect to make lots of royalty money, since both VxWorks and JavaOS will reside in each NC client, but neither Sun nor WIND is driving the NC. IBM would like to be a driver. So would Netscape. But, as has been said all along on this thread, Oracle owns the NC.
Allen |
