Network computer scorecard: hype 1, reality 0

If you expect network computers (NC) to solve your management woes, you may want to think again. And if you expect them to support all the latest features of todays browsers, you’ve got another thing coming.

Judging by the HDS @workStation we tested, NCs are not plug-and-play dumb terminals. Setting them up requires only a bit of effort. But the real fun begins after installation. For Windows users in particular, NCs are just different enough from real PCs to bring about a raft of support calls, increasing your ad-ministration load.

Similarly, while NCs may support Java and ActiveX, you will have to wait for hardware vendors to update their bundled software browsers before you can use state-of-the-art Web features such as frames, Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) and anything that requires a plug-in application.

We looked at HDS Network Systems, Inc.’s @workStation, an NC based on Intel Corp.’s i960 processor and designed for corporate offices. The computer itself is housed in a 12-by-2-inch tabletop unit with net, serial, parallel, keyboard, mouse and video connectors on the back. The monitor is a relabeled Digital Equipment Corp. 17-inch tube. The unit also sports a PC Card slot, into which we inserted an HDS-supplied, 40M-byte PC Card hard drive that contain-ed a beta version of netOS 2.0, HDS’s NC operating system. For computers without the hard drive, you can install netOS to a server directory and boot from the server.

The @workStation is capable of browsing the World-Wide Web, and can run applications on a separate networked server in much the same manner as X terminals. In fact, the @workStation can function as an X terminal with a Unix host. To use it this way or as a browser, you must first specify a TCP/IP address and gateway from the setup menu.

The interface of the @workStation will be familiar to anyone comfortable with Windows 95, but there are some significant differences.

Instead of a “Start” button, an “@work” button at the top of the screen offers users the option of starting sessions with Explorer – the built-in Web browser (not Microsoft’s); Insignia Solutions, Inc.’s NTrigue, a Windows NT host access program; or a terminal session to connect to a Unix host. You can run other bundled applications or change settings from the @work button, as well.

We tried running the Explorer browser against a variety of Web pages, such as those with Java and ActiveX features. Against simple pages it worked fine – although extremely slowly. The browser choked on more complex objects, such as animated GIFs and frames, and failed to run objects that required plug-ins, such as VRML. Explorer ran Java code fine – though not JavaScript – but at a speed that, had we not been unusually patient, might have caused us to throw down our mouse in disgust.

If we had our druthers, we would run Netscape Communications Corp.’s Navigator from the host rather than HDS’s Explorer browser. Explorer, based on code licensed from Spyglass, Inc., has a similar look and feel to Navigator 1.0. But, in our tests, it was slower than Navigator in retrieving and reloading pages.

HDS has just announced a licensing agreement with Netscape, so improvements in the browser are on tap for future versions. Along the right side of the @workStation screen is a toolbar with icons to start an Explorer or NTrigue session, invoke the calculator, the clock, console and telnet programs, as well as Check and Change settings.

Among the settings you can change is the Window manager. This box has multiple personalities – three window managers that make the interface appear as if it were Windows 95, Motif or Open Look. Each is functionally equivalent, but the flexibility can make different kinds of users feel at home.

Not so simple, really

Windows support comes thanks to NTrigue. The NTrigue host is a version of Windows NT 3.51, modified to support Citrix Systems, Inc.’s Intelligent Console Architecture. The server software re-places the operating system on the host. The drawback is you cannot yet upgrade to Windows NT 4.0. An NTrigue client lives on the NC. You to connect to the host and use any resident applications.

When you start NTrigue, a login screen prompts for username, password and a host to validate them. The NTrigue client doesn’t automatically know the available hosts on the network, so you must enter the IP address of a valid host the first time you connect. This may be enough to alienate some users. What alienated us was that the @workStation failed to connect more often than it succeeded. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and crossing our fingers seemed to have no effect at all.

Once we connected successfully, we were able to run host applications with ease.

The NTrigue client interface resembles that of Windows 95 (despite the fact that the host is running Windows NT 3.51), but it does not work just like Windows 95. Most irritatingly, there is the question of window focus. Under Windows 95, a highlighted title bar indicates an active window. That is not always the case with the @workStation. If you have just exited another application, you return to a window with a highlighted title bar, but the window doesn’t return to active focus until you click in it. Numerous times, we began typing in an application, only to have our keystrokes ignored until we repositioned the mouse and clicked in a window or a field.

The problems we had with the @workStation were compounded by the sparseness and quality of the documentation. The user manual is poorly organized and, at less than 100 pages long, is not comprehensive enough – and we don’t say that just because pages 17 and 19 were missing. HDS’s technical support helps make up for the documentation’s deficiencies; on our calls, the technical support staff was patient, courteous and knowledgeable.

Fitting in

After a week of using the @workStation, we concluded that an NC is appropriate for two kinds of organizations – those with highly centralized management that want total control over the applications their users run, and those that envision diminishing capital budgets and aim to minimize their hardware upgrade costs down the road.

The initial investment in an @workStation is out of line with current PCs. The model we tested, with 32M bytes of memory, lists for $1,799. For the same price, you could get a speedy Pentium with comparable memory, a smaller monitor and a gigabyte of hard drive space. The lowest end @workStation, with 8M bytes of RAM and a gray-scale monitor, lists for $749.

Theoretically, it is not the initial investment that makes an NC a reasonable choice. Because it can run applications on state-of-the-art workstations elsewhere on the network, the NC has a longer useful life than the three years or so of a typical network client. Instead of upgrading all users, you simply upgrade the hosts from which they run applications.

In practice, the support costs for this first-generation product should quickly eat up any onetime cost savings. Until vendors work out the kinks in NCs, well stick with more traditional technology.