Microsoft Corp, having greeted the whole concept of the sub-$500 Network Computer with scorn and derision, is now reportedly working on client and server software for a sub-$500 diskless Windows terminal to make a pitch for a share of the market going to Network Computers. Bill Gates apparently pre-announced the new machines last week at the Software Developers Conference in San Francisco, adding that support for Windows terminals will be included in Windows NT 5.0. The specification is expected to include a graphic display interface; a keyboard; a mouse; 4Mb each of ROM and RAM; and a network interface board. Microsoft was clearly caught off guard by Gates’s pre-announcement, and couldn’t say what software it will run: It might run Windows CE or some version of Windows, or maybe something else altogether; we just don’t know, it told the paper, though we understand they will be supported by the multi-user version of Windows NT code named Hydra (CI No 3,112), which is both a full multiuser NT kernel and a thin-display protocol reportedly nabbed from Intel Corp.
By Tim Palmer
And now that it seems that it does believe in Network Computers or thin terminals after all, the company should remember the awkward lesson of IBM Corp’s 9370 small mainframe. Not only did the 9370 offer the best price-performance advance since the E- series or 4300 at the end of the 1970s, but it was stuffed with things such as Ethernet interfaces that users had requested but IBM had always assured them they didn’t want or need. The result was that the early 9370s were an abject failure as all the users had been assured they didn’t want or need the things that IBM had at last included and decided that now IBM had said they were all right, they would go with a company that had always believed in such things. In the case of thin clients, that would be the likes of Oracle Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc
