Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!bloom-beacon!WSL.DEC.COM!smokey
From: smokey@WSL.DEC.COM
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: ASCII terminals vs. X Window System terminals
Message-ID: <8901181551.AA17198@eros.pa.dec.com>
Date: 18 Jan 89 15:51:50 GMT
References: <8901172105.AA06900@hydra>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 32

Ralph:

As a long time user of such systems, the real "problem" is not the
system overhead involved with support X terminals vs. ASCII terminals.
While there is probably much more overhead involved in supporting X
(particularly burst repainting) that is not very significant compared
to the "multi context" capability X offers over ASCII terminals. 

What really happens is that your 20 users are now capable of
maintaining and interacting with many more simutaneous activities.
People routinely read their mail, compile programs, debug others,
compose documents, etc. ALL AT THE SAME TIME and X make them all a lot
better at doing it. Now you can argue that they can't really be typing
at all these applications simultaneously, but in fact the simplest
users will start doing 2-3 things at once, and the really good guys
will burn up all the cpu cycles you can possibly supply.

One solution is to provide real workstations for your more
sophisticated users and encourage them to do most of the computes
locally. This presumes they then  only use the central or networked
resources for file storage, printing, etc. In doing this you will
invent some other serious problems, like data backup, file sharing and
so on, but there are no free lunches in this game.

From a system manager/purchase position this all looks pretty bleak,
but from the percpective of a manager who is trying to get the work
done (research products, whatever) this all means more productivity.
Most significantly it means more effective use of the end-users
valuable time. This may not mean anything in a university setting, but
for those of us in industry, it is a big deal.

   smokey@wsl.dec.com