PCs cost too much to maintain and don't deliver enough return on investment.

That message is getting under vendors' skin, judging from last week's Comdex/Fall '96 show. Whether they showed off network computers or fully configured PCs, computer companies talked up their plans to reduce the cost of ownership for desktop systems.

Network computers also caught the attention of many information systems managers, who said that despite worries about network overload, they are willing to give the diskless network devices a shot.

The giant PC show offered many their first look at devices such as IBM's Network Station, Network Computing Devices' Universal Network Computer and Wyse Technology, Inc.'s latest Winterm, Model 4000.

Designed to offer users access to applications and data stored on a centrally managed server or mainframe, network computers offer hope that IS managers can reduce support and administration costs for large numbers of desktop users.

``I don't know everything there is to know about [network computers], but I'm very intrigued by them because what we spend on PC upgrades and maintenance is unbelievable,'' said Michael Haun, president of Bell-Haun Systems, Inc. in Westerville, Ohio. Bell-Haun maintains telephone systems.

Robert Tunney, a systems analyst at Lockheed Martin Corp. in Bethesda, Md., said his company is waiting for network computer hardware to come along and that buy-off from upper management isn't an issue. ``It won't be difficult at all as long as they work,'' he said.

IBM showed off its Network Station, which comes with IBM's LAN Control Client Manager for remote management. The prototype system was built to the Network Computer Reference Platform specification supported by IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Oracle Corp. and others.

Microsoft Corp.'s competitive response to the rival network computer also garnered its share of supporters. In a session hosted by Bear Stearns & Co., Jim McDonnell, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s worldwide marketing manager, outlined his company's commitment to Microsoft's NetPC, a bare-bones system that runs Windows.

``We believe the NetPC, which we're working on as we speak with Microsoft, will really get at this whole notion of total cost of ownership,'' McDonnell said.

The network computer also turned up as a topic of debate in a panel that included executives from SunSoft, Inc., Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. Guy ``Bud'' Tribble, vice president of object products at SunSoft, disputed the idea that network computers are a throwback to dumb terminals.

``Dumb terminals and mainframes load the server down too much,'' Tribble said. But network computers that run Sun's Java Internet programming language ``take the centralized management from the mainframe world and local processing power from the PC world and put them together.''

But speakers at International Data Corp.'s (IDC) session on network appliances threw cold water on the hype about network computers. IDC analyst Bruce Stephen said network computers will succeed mainly as terminal replacements in the commercial market.

The network computer ``is piggybacking on the coattails of terminal migration,'' Stephen said. ``It's also good for lightweight PC users.''

Source: Computerworld