BOScom Rolls Out Windows Thin Client, Bolsters Emulation

by Alex Woodie

BOScom announced a new Windows XP-based thin-client terminal and improvements to its Web- and Windows-based 5250 emulation offerings at the COMMON conference in Florida last week. With the announcements, the company (formerly known as Better On-Line Solutions (B.O.S.), which is now BOScom's parent company), has filled out its connectivity offerings to support the myriad ways that users connect to iSeries and zSeries servers.

Earlier this year, BOScom, through its BOSaNOVA subsidiary, ventured into the market for thin client computers with the introduction of the BOSaNOVA LTC-300 and the BOSaNOVA LTC-600 thin client Ethernet terminals, and a lower cost text-based terminal as well. Both the LTC-300 and its slightly faster big brother, the LTC-600, are based on the Linux operating system and ship with an open software stack, including the XPDF viewer for PDF documents, the RealPlayer media player, the CompuMaster 5250 emulator, and an option of three JVM-capable Web browsers: either Mozilla, Netscape, or Opera.

While BOScom touted the "Windows look and feel" of its two Linux-based offerings, it's difficult to fully replicate the functionality of a truly integrated package of desktop software, and it decided to develop a Windows-based thin-client terminal for those who go Windows all the way. Last week, BOScom announced its first Windows-based thin client, the XTC-400, which ships next month.

The XTC-400 features an embedded and scaled-down version of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system and VIA Technologies' 400 MHz X86 processor. While the XTC-400's "embedded" Windows XP operating system does not include all the bells and whistles--and, most important, the bloat--of a full-blown Windows XP image, the thin client has roughly twice the RAM (256 MB) as BOScom's top-of-the-line Linux thin client, the LTC-600, to run Windows XP. It also features a 256 Disk on Memory (DOM) module, which helps customers install their own applications. With all this memory, BOScom says, the XTC-400 runs faster than its other thin clients.

The $695 XTC-400 will ship with a full complement of the Microsoft desktop applications you have come to know and, hopefully, love, including Internet Explorer 6, Outlook Express, and Office Viewer. It also ships with the Adobe Acrobat Reader, to open those all-important PDF documents. Like all of BOScom's thin clients, the XTC-400 supports Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol and Citrix Windows emulation capabilities.

Perhaps most important, the XTC-400 ships with BOScom's own Windows-based 5250 emulation software, BOSaNOVA TCP/IP, instead of a third-party emulator that BOScom has to pay royalties for (such as with its Linux-based terminals). BOSaNOVA TCP/IP is BOScom's 5250 and 3270 display and printing emulation software for fat client, or client/server, environments. When the unit ships next month, BOScom will include an improved version of this software, which it also announced at COMMON last week.

The updated version of BOSaNOVA TCP/IP includes a new Management Module designed to reduce the administrative overhead and cost of supporting a distributed emulation environment. With the new Management Module, administrators can handle all of their basic maintenance tasks, including installation, upgrades, and configurations, from a single location on the network. Other supported activities include remote set-up of printer definitions, and user and group permissions. BOScom says the Management Module supports customizations, and that specific parameters, such as macros, printer definitions, or keyboard mappings, can be easily restored with the new module. The new Management Module is designed for large environments (100+ in-house or 20+ remote users) and pricing begins at $5,500 for 100 users.

BOScom's third COMMON announcement was the immediate availability of Jadvantage 5.2, the latest release of its Web-based 5250 emulation package. With this release, BOScom says, the software supports the Java 2 Runtime environment, which brings a number of benefits. Some of the benefits of Java 2 Runtime support, the company says, is increased platform support (including Windows, Linux, and Macintosh PCs), streamlined installation of the Jadvantage Server, and support for Swing graphics in the Jadvantage applet and display session components of the Jadvantage client.

For more information, go to www.bosweb.com.

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