Putting Windows on the world
Line speeds will rule out serious use of the NC on the Web for a while yet. But in any case, what on earth would you run on it?
Corel is writing a version of its Office suite in Java - you can download a beta version from www.corel.com and Oracle has announced three applets including a mini-editor.
But for a while, surprisingly, what a lot of people could be running is Windows. UK company Insignia Solutions has developed a version of Windows NT called NTrigue, which allows computers including Macs or Unix machines to run Windows.
Windows runs on a powerful server under NTrigue - the client machine sends keypresses and receives only display data.
This "virtual Windows" can run faster than it would locally. Now, Insignia has written its client software in Java so that any machine with a JVM and a suitable monitor can run it.
The immediate use is to run existing applications on NCs over local networks.
Data traffic is modest so it is workable across the Web - perhaps to access office applications remotely. This is done already by PC-based remote control software.
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