According to many reports, the big news out of the recent PC Expo show in New York was the "official" launching of the NetPC effort. Even the San Francisco Chronicle thought the NetPC announcement was big news, leading the entire paper with a NetPC story one day. Talk about your slow news weeks. Other media outlets followed suit, trumpeting the idea that this was Wintel's "answer" to the network computer.

The problem is, the NetPC doesn't warrant such serious coverage. Since its main backers are Intel and Microsoft, there was enough marketing money spent to ensure that many media outlets would at least repeat the companies' NetPC mantras. What was lacking was a little bit of insight. And it only takes a little bit of insight to realize that the whole NetPC idea is dead on arrival.

The NetPC is a platform built on three shaky legs, which is not the kind of foundation you want to use as the base of an enterprise network infrastructure. More important, NetPCs are not going to deliver reduced cost of ownership anytime soon - a fact that should keep driving network and IS managers to the Sun/Oracle/IBM/Netscape school of NCs for the foreseeable future.

Supposedly, there was to be a great show of unity between Microsoft, Intel and their merry band of PC OEMs at PC Expo, all happily uniting behind the NetPC idea. For the uninitiated, the NetPC can best be described as a dumbed-down Windows PC platform, with a sealed box, a disk drive and built-in networking technology. This design was meant to provide ease of use and administration in networked installations. Like the NC backers, who are rallying around a common set of specifications, the NetPC folks have also drafted a reference spec, which all have pledged to follow. Well, sort of....

Already, the PC vendors are trying to break free of the "spec" NC mold, for the simple reason that it doesn't benefit them to follow it. PC vendors like Dell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard are locked in a death battle for market share, where margins are already razor-thin and price cuts are a weekly occurrence. What motivation will these vendors have to produce, market and sell a box that is-by definition and design-no different from anyone else's?

The answer is none - which will probably equal the number of "true" NetPCs that ever get shipped.

On the management and cost-of-ownership front, NetPCs are reliant upon Microsoft to deliver a list of important server-based technologies that includes automatic software distribution and advanced directory capabilities. The current time-frame for the first deliverables in this scheme, which Microsoft calls "Zero Administration Windows," is Fall of 1998, when Windows NT Server 5.0 is now scheduled to ship.

But how many network managers are actually willing to wait a year or more for version 1.0 software from Microsoft, whose strength has never been in networking? We're once again back to that answer: none.

The third flaw in the NetPC scheme again revolves around the phrase "Zero Administration Windows," which may qualify as the next to the best oxymoron, just behind "jumbo shrimp."

The early crop of Network Computer devices all use lightweight, stripped-down operating systems for a very simple reason: Something that's small and simple (and in some cases, burned right into silicon) is infinitely more reliable than something as bloated, complex and unfinished as Windows.

No matter how good Microsoft's server-side software gets, the company still has a lot of work to do on client versions of Windows before the operating system software can ever be considered administration-free. Remember this later today, when you reboot your Windows PC after one of its inevitable daily crashes.

Though Network Computers are far from perfect, the designs and ideas behind them are far more in tune with what network managers really want - simplicity and easier management. There's nothing simple or easy about networking a Windows PC- no matter what kind of name you slap on it.

Paul Kapustka is an editor-at-large at CommunicationsWeek.

Source: Communications Week