Five Windows-Based Terminals

ENT, Nov 18, 1998 by Kenneth I. MacLeish

There were a few other oddities as well. The screen saver obstinately refused to be disabled, resisting repeated attempts and reboots. Inexplicable for a diskless workstation, the Viewpoint consistently took close to 20 seconds to accept changes made to its configuration. When it then displayed a message stating, "The system needs to be restarted to enable changes -- do you want to restart now?", and the Yes button was chosen, the system did not restart. Finally, as was the case with the unit used in our Terminal Server review, this one would not accept a static IP address, although it worked just fine with DHCP addressing. This may be a non-issue since most of these machines will likely be used in a DHCP environment, but Boundless' explanation that it encountered a bug in the CE network driver sounds a bit flat when our other four participants, all running Windows CE, exhibited no such difficulty.

The Viewpoint TC 320 left us with very mixed feelings, as it combined a buggy software component and a hardware package with unmatched expansion capabilities. It should be easier to resolve the software bugs than it is to alter the physical layout. We anticipate that when this model reaches commercial release status, which is expected by press time, the problems will be gone, leaving an entrant to the Windows-based terminal market with pricing and features that make it very attractive.

NCD ThinStar 200 Network Computing Devices Inc.

Mountain View, Calif.

(650) 694-0650 www.ncd.com Price: $725 with keyboard and mouse

CPU: MIPS 4300, 100 MHz RAM: 16 MB

The NCD ThinStar 200 comes from the plain side of its maker's product line. It doesn't have the elaborate video, Intel Corp.'s Wired for Management architecture, or full array of I/O ports, including USB, that the upmarket ThinStar 300 has. Network Computing Devices Inc. (NCD) has a track record of some note in the world of thin-client machinery, particularly with its long-term partnership with IBM for the development and manufacture of IBM's line of NCs.

The hardware was a bit light in its connectivity possibilities, with a single serial and parallel connection and no Smart Card or PC Card slot. Maximum video resolution is 1,024x768 at 85 Hz, and there is no audio support. Our testers found the case design oddly appealing, and noticed a practical advantage in the elevated chassis: It allowed the keyboard, mouse and power connectors to be placed on the bottom of the case, making efficient use of the limited space available for external connections.

Where this ThinStar really shined was in the Terminal Properties window, which contained evidence of considerable thought and refinement. There are six tabs available, with Management and Inventory added to the basic group. Our favorite was the Inventory, which made a wealth of system information available that remained hidden on most of the other machines. There are subsections for operating software, hardware, network and graphics, which list everything from the exact versions of all the built-in software, to the system serial number and installed RAM, to the network adapter's Mac address, and more. This may not seem especially noteworthy, but our Windows-based terminal experiences were marked with more than a few frustrations in obtaining information. The ThinStar was the only machine of the group that could tell us how much memory was installed and what the Mac address was.