Kevin & AMD Investors - A new Design Win for AMD - an HP WIndows Terminal.
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infoworld.com
Hewlett-Packard now shipping
Windows-based terminals
By Ephraim Schwartz
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 2:34 PM PT, Jul 27, 1998
Hewlett-Packard on Monday became one of the first system vendors to ship a Windows-based terminal (WBT), addressing the growing demand for graphical-based terminals to replace character terminals.
The $699 terminal will use an embedded Advanced Micro Devices x86 processor and work with Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture (ICA), WinFrame, and MetaFrame protocols for access to Windows. The price does not include a monitor.
HP's WBTs will run Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP, formerly known as T-share) protocol, along with the Windows CE operating system when Microsoft ships that software.
"Shipping of RDP is imminent," said David Fearnhead, general manager of Hewlett-Packard's thin-client operation, in Grenoble, France.
Although the name Windows-based terminal was deliberately not trademarked by Microsoft, according to Fearnhead, Microsoft is working on a logo approval program for such devices.
According to HP's Windows-based terminal product manager, Duncan McIntyre, there are a number of differences between the current WBTs and a WBT that will use Microsoft's WinCE and RDP and sport the Microsoft logo.
"RDP in its current release is aimed at the network environment and tuned to work on a network with the latency you see on a network. ICA performs very well over a modem," McIntyre said.
As more companies turn to standard Windows programs for their task-based workers, the Microsoft logo also offers a degree of reassurance for IS managers that programs and files will run without problems, McIntyre said.
"It's a stamp of approval from Microsoft," McIntyre said. "Users will also see the Windows logo on the screen locally when they boot up."
About six million graphical terminals will ship per year by 2002, according to International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
The strength of this market, according to Fearnhead, rests with the lower cost of ownership of these terminals, which have no hard or floppy disk drive for local storage.
"You can't do anything to them," Fearnhead said. "They're very reliable -- with no moving parts, there's very little in them that can break."
Without removable storage, WBTs are inherently more secure because data can not be taken
out, McIntyre added.
In addition, files are encrypted over the display protocol sent down the wire and unencrypted
when displayed on the terminal.
The WBT systems will be incorporated into HP's Extended Desktop Business Unit, of which
PCs, handheld devices, and portables are also a part.
The hardware is manufactured by Wyse Technology, in San Jose, Calif., and represents an
OEM agreement between Wyse and Hewlett-Packard, said a Wyse representative. Both
companies first teamed up on a deal to supply Federal Express with servers and terminals.
Systems are targeted at such markets as the insurance industry, airline reservations, and
point-of-sale.
The first WBTs -- there may be as many as two or three models -- include 16MB of RAM, a
10Base-T network interface card, two serial ports, one parallel port, two PS/2 ports, 16-bit
stereo sound output, 8-bit mono input, support for such input devices as bar code readers, and
a 1,024-by-768 pixel resolution monitor at 75 Hz.
The devices come with VT100, VT200 emulation as standard. Emulation for 3270 will be
included at no charge until the beginning of October. Pricing has not been set. The units are
shipping now.
Hewlett-Packard Co., in Palo Alto, Calif., is at hp.com.
Ephraim Schwartz is an editor at large for InfoWorld.
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