Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!visdc!jiii From: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Re-request X terminal info Summary: Some selection considerations Message-ID: <619@visdc.UUCP> Date: 15 Aug 89 00:18:57 GMT References: <8908101730.AA00540@syteka.hls.com> <1672@bacchus.dec.com> Reply-To: jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) Organization: VI Software Development, Boise, Idaho Lines: 37 The July 1989 issue of UNIX WORLD, pg 75, reviewed the NCD16 and the Acer Counterpoint Model 100. The author, Rik Farrow, seemed quite biased against X. This erupted into a fairly interesting bitch fight in the "letters" section of the September 1989 issue. In my opinion, one of the most important things to keep in mind is cost. The new Tektronics XN11 color machine is over $7,000! This seems out of line considering that most of the "work" of providing pixel by pixel instructions for drawing images is done by the client software, which does not execute on the X terminal. The second thing that I would consider is memory expansion. X terminals can handle the overhead of restoring the display that lies under a window only if they have enough memory. The Acer Counterpoint, for example, has an 8086 and is limited to only 640 K. The final consideration is performance. Since the X server function is well-defined, I would expect someday to see a reasonably-priced machine, utilizing a TMS34010, or equivalent, graphics processor plus some custom ASICs, that achieves really good performance. I would think that for the $2,500 you must currently spend for a monochrome NCD16, you should be able to get at least 1,024x768 pixels x 16 colors. Otherwise, it seems that a person would be better off to set up an SVGA display on a 386 PC. It costs about $1,500 to add this display capability to a PC, so X terminals must provide additional performance in the form of writing speed, pixels, and/or colors. Otherwise, they are pointless. This is because X terminals don't eliminate the requirement for some sort of local computer. To do so would mean running X client as well as the database client software on the database server. Since the X client is executing on a machine that is also required in order to run the database client software, the only logical reason to split off the X server to a separate machine is for increased performance. -- John E Van Deusen III, PO Box 9283, Boise, ID 83707, (208) 343-1865 uunet!visdc!jiii