(Respectfully) Just in case you fellow GP-UKers are shuffling uneasily on
your wobbly bottoms, I am referring to the computer systems in your
surgeries and not the highly IT-trained professionals that tap on the keys.

It seemed only the other day that a practice computer was based on the newly
developed 386 chip, and this was reserved for the highly specialised server
in the special room where no-one was able to breathe without a surgical
mask.  The likes of you and I were in our rooms, being divvied out amounts
of the servers time at the end of dumb terminals.

Then we all got Windoze or Windoze'95, and got into peer-to-peer networks
with the undivided attention of a dizzying amount of megaherz on our very
own PC in our consulting rooms.

We were all set to embark on this highly egalatarian style of practice
computing (with no less than 25 workstations) in our NZ practice, when we
heard that evolution is about to take us around a full circle (I suppose you
could call this REvolution).

Our prospective new software supplier tells us that there is a new breed of
terminal coming up called a WINterm, which is basically a spin-off from the
desire of the average american to have a box on the back of the telly that
you can surf the net on.  The commercial version of this is variously known
as a "shell PC", or "information appliance", or "thin client".   The
industry standard for this seems to be rather loose, and varies from a
monitor with a graphics drive and i/o device, to a budget pentium that they
can't flog to anyone else.  Wyse is producing one at a reputed $500 US,
which it you do your arithmetic on our proposition is a lot of money.

Now I know we are reputed to be 20 yrs behind the times in NZ (selenium
deficiency you know), so I wonder if any list members have had experience of
this mainframe-style intranet mode of computing.

In case you have had your curiosity aroused, try:


http://www.iworld.com
http://www.computerworld.com/search (using the keyword "thin")
http://netday.iworld.com/96Jun/0621-wyse.shtml
http://www.wyse.com/winterm


Tom James

[log in to unmask]

greeting from Poverty Bay NZ.

:-) :-) :0

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Tom James,                    [log in to unmask]
23a Grant Road, Whataupoko,Gisborne, New Zealand 09-867-0790



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