Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lupine!ed
From: ed@lupine.UUCP (Ed Basart)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Single user vs. shared (was Re:
Summary: X wins the desktop, Killer X terminals
Keywords: X-terminals, process/task distribution
Message-ID: <1087@lupine.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 90 06:40:27 GMT
References: <52817@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <76700181@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <11731@nlm-mcs.arpa>
Organization: Network Computing Devices, Mtn View, CA
Lines: 58

Obviously I am biased (due to my employment situation), but I believe
X terminals have a semi-permanent advantage over workstations.  
The real difference between a workstation and an X terminal (or in our 
ergot, network display station), is the fact that one can build a 
point product that purely runs X, avoids all the trash, and is 
consequently highly integrated and "cheaper" and sometimes "better".  
Workstations are low cost (read microprocessor-based) computers with 
a display plopped on top.  Network display stations go one step further by
first starting with the display, and wrapping "just enough" hardware
around it to get it to work effectively.

In the case of diskless workstations versus network display stations,
I think many observers would agree that battles rage on, but that
network display stations have won the war.  Diskless workstations are
an abomination and aberration that were contrived to reduce cost.  The
result is an amputated system sliced through some rather important
arteries.  Just put your sniffer on a network of diskless nodes and
watch the flow of blood that is paging traffic.

So, when one views a workstation as a general purpose platform that has
to keep getting faster and faster, with ever more memory, disc, and
floating point (remember many resources must be added to feed the
ravenous appetite of Un*x), it will cost more than 
"display-only" network display with its relatively simple operating
environment.  If workstations evolve to become more like network
display stations, then we will be back to the CISC versus RISC 
arguments that have given us all such entertaining reading here in this
forum.

As long as the workstation is a pile of boxes and add-in boards, they 
will always cost more than the corresponding X terminal.  And suppose
that soothsayers are right, costs plummit and a diskful workstation 
may cost $499 and an X terminal $475, but who cares?  As long as the 
X terminal remains dedicated to a single, simple function it will work 
better and be the desktop device of choice because it has 1 million 
less lines of code to worry about.

Borrowing a line from Eugene Brooks:

	THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THE ATTACK OF THE KILLER X TERMINALS

(I had to put that in caps so that folks can hear me over the roar 
of the fans in their workstations.)











-- 

Ed Basart,  350 N. Bernardo Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043, (415)694-0650
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