From: bmw@isgtec.com (Bruce M. Walker)
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: Xterminals versus PC-with-eXcursion
Date: 26 Jul 92 13:29:52 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: ISG Technologies Inc., Mississauga Ontario

Date: 25 Jul 92 19:09:09 GMT
Message-Id: <2885@isgtec.isgtec.com>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.windows.misc

In article <1992Jul23.150517.19063@alw.nih.gov> susanc@helix.nih.gov (Susan Chacko) writes:
> We were thinking of getting some NCD Xterminals to replace our
> VT220s when we came across a demo for eXcursion, which is 
> offered by Digital [...]
> Since one could buy a PC with Windows for less than
> the cost of an Xterminal, and get the potential for local
> applications like wordprocessing as well, what's the
> advantage of an Xterminal? 
 
I don't think this is really true when you talk about similar screen
sizes, which is a key point.

Typically, X display screens are larger than 1024x768; the inexpensive
NCD-15b's have 1024x800, most workstations are in the 1280x1024 range.
The largest 'inexpensive' PC display is Super VGA, 1024x768, but any
I've seen has flickered badly enough to make it unusable on a daily
basis (even with non-interlaced displays).

If you just need to replace VT220's, then you can live with a "smaller"
X screen.  An "xterm" window (VT220 emulator) is about 700 pixels wide,
with window-manager decorations and all.  So let's look at that.

An NCD-15b is about $1000 US, so is the new Tektronix.  They're
monchrome, high resolution, high vertical scan rate (rock-solid
display, no flicker).  The box is compact, has no fan, comes with your
choice of keyboards: VT220, 97 key "Unix" style, etc.  They have 
excellent X performance, the processor has a fast path to video RAM.

The PC: you need a 33 MHz 386 (at least) to run Windows with any
performance, min 4 Meg RAM, a hard disk to boot it.  It has a fan,
likely fairly large box (mini tower), you have one keyboard flavour,
101-key IBM.  Let's put in a SVGA card and non-interlaced monitor
capable of 1024x768.  It will cost a lot: $700 for PC, $300 for
display, $200 for TCP/IP stack, $200 for X-on-pc s/w, $100 for
windows.  Total: $1500.  It'll be fuzzy (mono vs. colour) and it'll
flicker (low vertical scan rate).  I bet it will have pretty slow X
performance (I've played with them), the bottleneck is the poor
performance of VGA on an ISA bus.

> I'm also interested in any experiences with particular
> brands of Xterminals, i.e performance, cost etc., especially
> from anyone who has been through this decision recently.
> Any additional comments are most welcome.

I suggest that you get some vendors to let you try them on a trial
basis.  Make sure they support XDM (for booting and the login: prompt
management).  Find out how much RAM you need to get some real work
done, and believe them, don't cheap-out later.

Oh, and try a copy of the X-on-PC s/w out as well.  Have people try
real work on it.  Bring up a couple of xterms and a clock, play with
the scrollbars (this will likely look bad). Just buy one copy and
install it on an existing PC.  We went through this and no-one uses the
X-on-PC s/w :-)

We ended up with NCD-15b's (10) and one colour NCD-14c.  We are a
s/w development shop (imaging) with a lot of workstations (HP, DEC,
IBM, Sun, SGI etc.)

Have fun and good luck!

--
"The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devils' own herd."
                                          -- Edmund Blackadder II
bmw@isgtec.com   [ ...!uunet.ca!isgtec!bmw ]  Bruce Walker