Like several other companies, Hewlett-Packard Co. hopes to reinvent its X terminal business by adding to it a Java virtual machine and Web browsing capabilities.

HP's Panacom Automation Division recently announced two redesigned, multilingual X terminals that support Java, Windows, Unix and legacy applications.

The Entria II and Envizex II netstations have been outfitted with 120MHz and 133MHz 4300 RISC processors, respectively; a Java virtual machine; a Java-based Web browser; 10BaseT Ethernet; and higher performance graphics with crisper resolution.

HP's Panacom division joins a growing list of companies that are Java-enabling their network-centric systems in an effort to meet corporate demand for an overall lower cost of computing. However, unlike comparable systems from Wyse Technology Inc. and Network Computing Devices Inc., the HP systems do not conform to the Oracle NC specification.

Some company executives do not believe in Java-based NCs as defined by Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., because they claim that it is too decentralized and limiting. They nevertheless realize it is difficult to ignore the growing number of Java developers and the role Java is beginning to play in the enterprise.

In addition to running Java applications, the new HP systems include Insignia Solutions Inc.'s Intrigue software for reading Windows applications and an emulator for reading 5250 and 3270 legacy applications, said K.C. Chavda, marketing manager for the Panacom division, in Waterloo, Ontario.

The systems, priced from $700, also include a Java-based Web browser from Navio Communications Inc., a minimum of 8MB of RAM, and, in the Envizex, an optional floppy drive and two PCI expansion slots.

Customers interested in the Navio browser or Java virtual machine will have to wait until HP makes those modules officially available in the third quarter.

HP's Panacom division has had its own sales force separate from HP's commercial PC group, in Palo Alto, Calif. However, that may change over the next year as HP looks to offer corporate customers a full range of desktop clients, Chavda said.

One possible scenario would be to enable one sales force to sell everything from a Java-based netstation to NetVectras to dual-processor Vectra workstations, Chavda said.

Source: PC Week