As IBM Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Oracle Corp were promising to change the world as we know it this week with their network computing standards announcement, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based HDS Network Systems Inc believes it can offer a different perspective. The X terminal specialist company will launch its $750 network computer on June 11 to anybody that cares to listen (CI No 2,861). The company believes the trio of heavyweights and their friends are cooking up what will prove to be a proprietary specification, whereas HDS’s offering is a totally open system. The company’s executive vice-president of marketing Michael Kantrowitz says the thing can run applications on any server system: mainframe, Unix or personal computer. It runs HDS’s own Posix-compliant HDS NetOS on the network computer, which includes a Spyglass Inc Web browser and a Java Virtual Machine to support Java applets. The company hopes to get some OEM customers for the operating system and the device itself. It has an Intel Corp 80960 RISC processor at its heart – a real screamer, according to Kantrowitz, and comes with 4Mb memory, upgradable to 128Mb. He believes the network computer has every angle covered in terms of systems. It has built-in Internet access with a choice of service providers via a TCP/IP stack with a Point-to-Point Protocol driver. The operating system can run on an optional hard drive, and a floppy drive is also an option. Kantrowitz is positively evangelical about the device’s openness. It can run any legacy application, he claims, including IBM 3270 and 5250 terminal emulation, Digital Equipment Corp VT320 emulation, X Window for Unix and personal computer applications using the ICA 3.0 protocol developed by Citrix Systems Inc, previously used for communications between servers and X terminals. Microsoft Corp has licensed ICA for future versions of Windows. HDS will show a prototype of the network computer at JavaOne in San Francisco at the end of the month. The kit comprises of the box, a 17 grey-scale monitor, keyboard and a mouse. Any HDS X terminal built since 1991 can be upgraded to a network computer for $50, with software downloaded from HDS’s Web site and have all the capabilities of the network computer, asserts Kantrowitz.
