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Gates pushes NetPC

Microsoft tries to steal NC thunder with promise of a 'lite' Windows, sealed PC

By Elinor Mills and Kristi Essick, IDG News Service, 11/01/96

San Francisco -- The age of "information at your fingertips" will be closer with the availability next year of portable data devices and NetPCs that will allow people to migrate to network-based distribution of data and software with existing hardware, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and CEO Bill Gates told developers in late October.

"We do believe in an evolutionary approach," where people can use their existing applications and infrastructure, he said in a keynote speech at the Microsoft Site Builder Conference, which has served as the launchpad for Microsoft's NetPC concept. One year after denouncing so-called networked Internet appliances, which have evolved into the network computer or NC, Gates is countering the movement with a similar model that relies on Windows software, his company's bread and butter.

Attendees met Gates's latest vision with skepticism.

"It's to be expected," said Michael Ormes, a system architect at Asymetrix Inc. in Seattle, WA. "Microsoft's take on the world, [its] whole investment is PC architecture. The folks touting the [NC] don't have that foundation. For them it's cheaper to cause a paradigm shift."

Some were skeptical about the entire thinner client movement.

"I'm really dubious about it," said Dave Jonsson, an information specialist at the Utah State Department of Community and Economic Development. For 00, the projected cost for NCs, "we've got to see what it can do."

On Monday, October 28, the day before Sun's JavaStation announcement, Microsoft released the specifications for the NetPC, the next evolution of Windows-based computers. NetPC is designed to allow centralized administration and distribution of information and software through the network.

"It will take all the richness of the Windows PC, [and] the software capabilities, but put it in a package that the amount of changes to the hardware in the life of the PC will be minimized," Gates said. "In most cases, the most you would do is add more RAM."

"Because it's a uniform hardware configuration, you've got a very low cost" for the PC itself and in terms of cost of ownership," he said.

The NetPC is different from the NC promoted by Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., and others because the NetPC is compatible with PCs and will still have a hard disk to cache information from the server, Gates explained. "We will support diskless devices, but that's not part of the NetPC configuration."

Microsoft's active desktop concept, under which information goes to the user rather than the user having to go in search of the information, will be in "full deployment next year," he said. "In the world of technology, where people often are overly optimistic, it's quite nice to say things are ahead of schedule."

Ten years from now, a majority of the operating system software will function with natural input that allows the user to interact with the data, he added. "Natural interaction is something we are pulling together."

Also exciting is the emergence of portable devices, or information appliances, that will allow users to exchange information with PCs, he said. "So this year there will be a new round of hardware devices and they will have a browser built in to them" with smaller screens and less functionality than PCs .

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

 

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