Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!ncar!mead!corbet
From: corbet@mead.uucp (Jonathan Corbet)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Need comments on GraphOn OptimaX (or others)
Message-ID: <3325@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 14:54:36 GMT
References: <851@arisia.Xerox.COM>
Sender: news@ncar.ucar.edu
Reply-To: corbet@mead.UCAR.EDU (Jonathan Corbet)
Organization: Field Observing Facility, NCAR, Boulder, CO
Lines: 52

fischer@arisia.Xerox.COM (Ronald A. Fischer):
>Could anyone who has used the GraphOn OptimaX please drop me a line
>containing any wisdom about whether its a worthwhile X terminal?

I spent a couple hours playing with one; here's a few observations:

It is not a workstation replacement.  There are times when you simply *know*
that you are working over a serial line.  If you have any users who are
fond of putting cute pictures into their root window, this terminal will 
drive them nuts.  Any sort of raster data is very slow.

They do not offer a color version, and probably never will.  A serial line
would be far too slow for that -- it would make the Sun server look very
good indeed! :-)

Nonetheless, they do amazingly well.  Most of the usual operations, such
as text, moving windows, etc., are entirely fast enough.  ico goes pretty
fast, although it exhibits a tendency to accelerate when it goes behind
an obscuring window.  Clearly they are just being clever and not sending
the instructions over the line for vectors which will never be drawn; but
it is a little disorienting.

The resolution is a bit low for my taste: 600x800.  A number of applications
that I have gotten to know and love (texx, xmh, etc) do not fit on the 
screen in a nice way.

There is a bug or two left in the system.  One of the first things I did
was to crash their version of twm, which was immediately followed up by a
total halt of the terminal.  The salesperson had to call the company to
figure out how to reset it.

The actual server runs on a Sun or Vax host.  The load on that host seems
to be relatively small, even when the terminal is being driven to the max.

They distribute a reasonably full set of MIT X clients with their system,
but they seem to be a little behind in the bug fixes.  I managed to kill
an xterm by accidentally hitting the right mouse button -- a problem that
had a patch out some time ago.

It worked nicely with the NCAR graphics system, generating a nice wireframe
version of Long's Peak in a short time.  Vector graphics are fast, and they
look sharp.

In summary, I think it can be a useful device for casual X users, who have
not been spoiled by having a full workstation or network-based X terminal.
Those who use it for text work, or for simple vector graphics, will be 
happy.  I would certainly buy it before I got another dumb monochrome
graphics terminal for one of my users.

Jonathan Corbet
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Field Observing Facility
corbet@stout.ucar.edu