Coral Springs, Florida-based multi-user MS-DOS pioneer Citrix Systems Inc has announced WinView for Networks, its application server software for remote access to Windows and MS-DOS applications. The offering, which operates under NetWare 3.11 or higher, follows from the hand-on of Novell Inc’s NetWare Access Services products to the company last October. Citrix says that WinView for Networks does its Windows-specific tasking at the application server, with only the user interface executed at the client workstation. This enables remote users to run Windows and MS-DOS applications with local performance, says the company. The mechanism for this is WinView’s Intelligent Console Architecture, which minimises data traffic by sending only Windows graphic commands, video images, keyboard and mouse updates between the remote client and server, says Citrix. The company claims this enables users to run Windows 3.1 over low bandwidth lines. According to the company, a single 80486 application server can support up to 10 concurrent Windows – or 20 MS-DOS – users, depending on the application, each running multiple Windows and MS-DOS applications. The offering is also said to feature network utilities including resource management, event-logging, user messaging and print spooling. It runs in protected mode, so misbehaving applications cannot affect system integrity or other users’ work, says Citrix. The boldest claim for the product is that its distributed Windows architecture, licensed from Microsoft Corp, will enable 80286s to access Windows applications. The company says this is possible because the processing power required to run the WinView small client program is less – 640Kb RAM on 80286s – than that required to run Windows 3.1 natively. The product is shipping now, priced $2,650 for a 10-user licence and $700 for additional five-user licences.
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