Wyse ICA Terminal and Wyse WinFrame

Wyse is currently the premier vendor of low-cost ICA-based Windowsterminals. For less than $1000 (street price), you can purchase a desktop unitwith a 14" color monitor, keyboard, mouse, and ports for 10Mbit-per-second(Mbps) Ethernet, serial, and parallel connections. For even less money, you canpurchase gray-scale units or units without an Ethernet connection (to use forremote access). And if you supply your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse, you canpurchase a pizza box unit in the $500 neighborhood.

I tested the Wyse 2500T terminal, which includes an Ethernet connection,14" color monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The configuration I worked withsupports only 16 colors, but a firmware download lets you upgrade to 256 colors.

Configuring the terminal was simple­you configure it with an IPaddress or set it to use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and thenenter the IP address of the ICA NT server system. When you start the terminal,it connects to the NT server, and the next thing you see is a Windows NT logonscreen, so you can log on and interact with the NT server as if you were sittingat a direct-attached monitor with a keyboard and mouse.

The Wyse terminal works with any ICA-based server product, or you canpurchase the Wyse implementation of WinFrame (see Screen A). The Wyseimplementation is packaged several different ways: For example, the base package($1499) supports five terminals but does not include ICA client software, doesnot support RAS, and cannot be a domain controller. You can buy extra terminallicenses, client software, and RAS/domain controller support separately.

I tested the base software in the Lab and found that it installed andoperated as well as any other implementation of WinFrame I looked at. I alsotested the Wyse terminal against the Wyse, Tektronix, Insignia, and NCDimplementations of WinFrame, and the Wyse terminal worked consistently andreliably.

In performance tests, I experienced no significant I/O delays running theWyse terminal in a LAN environment. Clearly, performance wasn't as good as thatof a full-blown Pentium Pro NT Workstation, but in my judgment, it ran as wellas a low-end Pentium or high-end 486 system running NT. I was pleasantlysurprised by the terminal's performance, especially considering its low price.