Hewlett-Packard Co hopes to shake up the X-terminal market this week with the launch of its highest powered models to date: the Envizxex series of multimedia stations, today’s edition of our sister paper Unigram.X reports. Hewlett-Packard was the one of the first systems vendor to launch X-terminals back in October 1989, and has now taken over the market lead in both numbers and revenues from independent X-terminal pioneer Network Computing Devices Inc, according to X Business Group figures. Rated at above 165,000 Xstones, the systems include audio support, local scanner support and even an internal floppy drive for MS-DOS disks as an option. And Hewlett claims to have knocked on the head the claims of the independents that system vendors always charge more, by pricing the systems below competing offerings. Hewlett compares its 19 colour Envizex Model 19Ca with Network Computing’s 19c X-terminal, claiming twice the performance for $4,700, or $1,000 less than the Network Computing model. It’s also $800 less than Tektronix Inc’s recently launched 150,000-Xstone XP358 Series X. Hewlett-Packard offers multi-host X-server software on a single CD-ROM, supporting Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM Corp and Santa Cruz Operation Inc host operating systems, so that the stations will run easily on any of those hosts. The terminals come in two ranges: Accelerated, using the 28MHz Intel Corp 80960CF RISC chip and rated at 165,000 Xstones; and the mid-range Intermediate series, using the 25MHz 80960CF and rated at 110,000 XStones. They come with 15, 17 or 19 colour and 19 grayscale (Accelerated) or 14, 15 or 17 colour (Intermediate). Prices start at $2,000 for the 14Ci Intermediate, and there is also a trade-in deal for 700/RX X users.
