The ability to run what are euphemistically known as productivity applications, otherwise known as Windows applications, on Unix-X Window desktops is proving a long hike, even without Microsoft Corp’s best efforts to grease the path. Straightforward implementation of Windows products under Unix was stillborn due to cost, lack of volume, and a dearth of current versions of packages. The emulators, Insignia Solutions Ltd, Locus Computing Corp, MainSoft Corp and Bristol Technology Inc sold their souls to the Redmonder for the chance to get their code working with any degree of efficiency. SunSoft Inc’s Wabi translator tried to create a total Windows environment without Windows. Now Hewlett-Packard Co, which already offers Wabi and Insignia’s SoftWindows, is taking another bite at the personal computer application-on-Unix cherry, with an integrated offering it is calling the HP 500 Windows Application Server. It agreed that what it is offering is not new technology-wise; Locus Merge on top of Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix, preferably running on one of its HP Vectra personal computers, networked to any Unix workstation or X terminal. But it believes the integration work and additional administration and network printing tools that have been built will prove attractive to customers, especially those struggling to implement Windows-under-Unix offerings. A 30-users system with a dual 90MHz Pentium Vectra, 64Mb memory, 1Gb disk Santa Cruz Unix and Locus Merge (HP 500 version 1.0) costs from $25,000; a 15-user offering on a uniprocessor is from $16,500. Software-only implementations for folk with other personal computers start at $8,000 for 30 users and $5,500 for 15 users. Upgrades are $3,000 for the 15-user symmetric multiprocessing version, $2,000 for uniprocessors. The integrated hardware and software is out in August, software-only in October. There will be a free upgrade to HP 500 1.1, the enhanced mode Windows (16-bit, 80386) version of Merge is due in October. Version 2.0, early next year, will add Merge’s 32-bit W indows95 implementation. Hewlett-Packard has drummed up some heavy duty price-performance numbers it has been using to pitch the HP 500 squarely at Tektronix Inc’s WinDD extensions to Windows NT. These enable X users to run shrink-wrapped Windows, NT, MS-DOS and OS/2 applications without emulation – and to a lesser extent Wabi. But the aggressive marketing is less impressive for its numbers game than for the well-researched, well-rehearsed and seemingly well-positioned campaign on which the company has embarked.
