It was noticeable that PC manufacturers were thin on the ground last week at the NC Reference Profile launch for whatever reason. In fact, there appeared to be no US-based PC companies there, leaving informed observers to imply that pressure from Redmond was to blame. However there was one lurking in the gloom, but you had to look very hard to spot it. It was the IBM Corp Personal Computer Co. For it transpires that it is the PC Co that’s running the six pilot projects John Thompson referred to (CI No 2,917), with devices it has developed. The company would not say how they differed from the AS/400 thin client (mentioned above), but added that it had already delivered what it called an NC solution to a customer, but added that clearly this is a beta site. There was no word on how many machines are involved. One of the trials is with a major European customer, Thompson said, but the location of the others is unclear, though they are not thought to be all US-based.
