Five Windows-Based Terminals

ENT, Nov 18, 1998 by Kenneth I. MacLeish

The Management tab had selections that primarily related to secondary setup options, such as a box for the location of the NCD ThinStar Management Service, and another to select the client configuration (RDP or ICA). A useful check box allowed the Connection Manager Configuration tab to be hidden, making it less likely that a user could fiddle with the network configuration. One noteworthy omission from these choices was the lack of any sort of password protection, which would seem to be the best way to prevent undesired alterations.

Although all our WBTs claimed to offer a variety of language support, only the ThinStar had more than U.S. English as a choice on the Input tab, giving U.K. English, French and German as options. Another small, but thoughtful, addition was the radio button option for right- or left-handed mouse operation, a point that the rest of the machines we tested missed entirely.

In a group of devices that are absolutely identical in their functionality to a user, NCD built in considerable hands-on appeal for the people responsible for the care and day-to-day operation of an enterprisewide deployment of these terminals. Everything worked well and showed the marks of good design. In a crop of very young devices, NCD's ThinStar seemed to have an edge in maturity.

Neostation 220

Neoware Systems Inc.

King of Prussia, Pa.

(610) 277-8300 www.neoware.com Price: $799 with keyboard and mouse

CPU: Motorola 860/821, 50 MHz RAM: 8 MB

Neoware, like NCD, has an extensive history in the world of thin clients. The company has developed and produced thin and lean client machines for almost every conceivable operating environment for several years, so the advent of Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, and the resulting new hardware category of Windows-based terminals is a natural area for Neoware's expertise.

The Neostation 220 is similar to the NCD in its single serial and parallel connection capabilities and 1,024x768 resolution, but adds audio connections and a single PC Card Type I/II/III slot. Depending on how this terminal is used, that slot may not be available for use, due to the fact that Neoware provides ICA compatibility in the form of flash ROM "personality modules." If the terminal needs to operate in a Citrix environment, the slot will be filled and unavailable. Other terminal emulation modules are available, but for the target market of Windows application environments, it would be useful for Neoware to incorporate ICA internally, as most of its competition has done.

In this comparison, Neoware suffered from much the same beta-level blues as the Boundless terminal. Our first sample just quit working altogether for about 15 minutes after our initial setup, then came back to life. More seriously, we could not get the Neostation to locate its Windows Terminal Server host by host name or fully qualified domain name: It only worked if we used the IP address. After consultation with Neoware, a second unit was supplied with some OS tweaks applied. The second sample worked with a fully qualified name, but still failed with only a host machine name. Once again, we were told that the cause was a previously undiscovered bug in Windows CE, and once again we must observe that four other machines -- all running Windows CE -- from four different sources, did not have this trouble.