Dell To Acquire Wyse

Dumb by generationxyu · 2012-04-03 02:23 · Score: 5, Funny

What an idea to acquire such a terminally dumb company.

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Re:Dumb by Sique · 2012-04-03 02:31 · Score: 4, Funny

You don't think this was a wyse decision?

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Re:Dumb by TWX · 2012-04-03 03:01 · Score: 5, Funny

Oh, a Wyse guy, huh?!

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Oh god by Dyinobal · 2012-04-03 02:24 · Score: 2, Informative

When I was in highschool my school used Wyse Terminals which was the most bad and ironic name I've ever seen. I hated those things..every one hated those things. They broke all the time and had to constantly be reflashed with a new image. They were so awful that by my Senior year they were being phased out entirely.

Re:Oh god by vlm · 2012-04-03 02:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

That was the latter years. The old ones were beyond awesome. A good rule of thumb for wyse terms was if you could not flash it, it was old enough to be fantastic, and if you could, its a turd. I have an old one on my desk for embedded work... Hey I've got the space, can always use another screen, etc. Kinda sucks for cut and paste, but perfect for watching logs and boot messages scroll by...

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Re:Oh god by Dogtanian · 2012-04-03 02:41 · Score: 2

When I was in highschool my school used Wyse Terminals which was the most bad and ironic name I've ever seen. I hated those things..every one hated those things. They broke all the time and had to constantly be reflashed with a new image. They were so awful that by my Senior year they were being phased out entirely.
YMMV. I had an admin job back in the late 90s that involved entering information into a dumb green-screen terminal. It was as tedious as hell, but at least the dumb Wyse terminal I was using- some of the time- had arguably the best mechanical key action (*) of any keyboard I've used, marginally beating the late-era Model B BBC Micros. Crappily, they later got some beige box PCs running a terminal emulator under NT that came with some mediocre generic membrane crap. To be fair, I'm not anti-membrane, as some modern ones can be quite good, but those were pretty "meh".

I got a mechanical Cherry keyboard a few years later on that was supposed to have a similar action- it was okay, but had just a bit too much resistance on the keys to have that satisfyingly effortless typing I was after.

(*) The type that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom of its travel, not the tediously-fetishised "clicky pressure point halfway down" action of the IBM Model M, whose obsessive fans seem to love it but anyone not already used to it would likely find strange- and noisy. (I didn't like it, even though I'd used plenty of mechanical keyboards previously).

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Re:Oh god by CAIMLAS · 2012-04-03 03:45 · Score: 2

I administered on a network where we used the Wyse terminals as dumb clients to talk to our in-house time (accounting) server. We had about 200 of them, of two different vintages.
We had old Wyse and new Wyse. The old ones ran an in-house rolled BSD, but the new ones were WinCE 4.x or 3.x and we weren't able to flash them with a newer BSD ROM due to the hardware being incompatible.
We ended up buying replacements for the newer model with the old models on Ebay.
I have no idea how their products have performed in the last 7 years, though. With a marketing name like 'cloud client computing', I'd sooner not use them.

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Re:Oh god by zipn00b · 2012-04-03 03:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yeah I did a LOT of installs from the Mid '80s on using mostly Wyse 50 or 60 terminals hanging off SCO boxes ( back when SCO was a real company not a lawsuit factory) And I was supporting software running on old SCO boxes 20 years later that still only ran nicely with Wyse 60 emulation instead of the default VT100 that so much terminal software assumed everything liked. I think it was in the mid-90's that I started replacing the WY60 terminals with emulators as it ended up being cheaper to run that over TCP/IP instead of hanging a terminal off a multi-port serial card. But for a long time one of my disaster backup plans had a couple locations stocked with the old terminals in case a hurricane took out our main office. Never used any of the newer line of terminals so can't say how good or bad they were but the old Wyse terminals worked great for a LONG time....
Re:Oh god by vlm · 2012-04-03 07:05 · Score: 2

Eventually the onboard nicad config batteries fail and leak... gotta pull them and replace with a little 2-cell AA battery holder from radio shack.
nicad juice will rot the traces if not caught in time.
Its a storage issue. Left plugged in forever, the battery never discharges so it never corrodes.

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Can't wait to see the rebranded offerings by sheehaje · 2012-04-03 02:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maybe Dell can finally offer an affordable thinclient. I am a big fan of their FX100, but it is priced out of range. By the time you license it and plug it in, it costs as much as a small form factor desktop. Not exactly the value customers are looking at with thin clients.

Lately we've been using PanoLogic Zero Clients. They are basically glorified network cards in a cube. No RAM, Processor, or other overhead that is prevalent in traditional ThinCleints. They are inexpensive and have a good management tool. Its inevitable that someone buys them out at some point.

Re:Can't wait to see the rebranded offerings by tlhIngan · 2012-04-03 04:04 · Score: 3, Informative

Maybe Dell can finally offer an affordable thinclient. I am a big fan of their FX100, but it is priced out of range. By the time you license it and plug it in, it costs as much as a small form factor desktop. Not exactly the value customers are looking at with thin clients.
The point was I think that the savings would come from not having to replace it ever unless it broke - so it would last 10+ years or three or four generations of desktops. The other savings was on the IT side - less management (these things boot up, there's nothing to break, nothing the user can download and infect it, etc) and just having to upgrade the server when necessary.
Of course, most businesses got sticker shock since they had to make huge IT investments, which they were loathe to do - big powerful servers/blades had to be bought, and terminals that cost the same as a desktop. From an initial investment, it didn't make sense since few businesses plan for such timespans...
Re:Can't wait to see the rebranded offerings by Ceriel+Nosforit · 2012-04-03 05:13 · Score: 2

The FX100 is generally used for keeping the admins out of the dino-pen. If they're in the same building they can't complain about lag or latency since there's dedicated hardware on the other end to squeeze bits over ethernet.
A hardware solution to a people-problem.

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Cloud? Why don't we... by PixetaledPikachu · 2012-04-03 02:27 · Score: 3, Informative

...call it what it is: Thin Client. Wyse offers pretty good range of thin clients, from Windows embedded to Linux with built in ICA client. We ended up going with HP, since Wyse's equivalent was pricier

Re:Cloud? Why don't we... by TWX · 2012-04-03 07:09 · Score: 2

Because managers seems to like new buzzwords for old things, and seem to like reinventing the wheel. This, however, is a first in that it's not reinventing the wheel so much as it's repackaging it and calling it something else.

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Dell has lost its way by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-03 02:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Michael Dell should shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders

Re:Relics by vlm · 2012-04-03 02:44 · Score: 3, Funny

Wyse is a bit of a relic. What next? Zenith Data Systems? Kaypro?

I'd like Altair to make a tablet. No more of this glass sheet crap, give me about 50 toggle switches and blinking lights.

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"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Why is slashdot so behind by gubers33 · 2012-04-03 02:50 · Score: 2

This was announced yesterday and I actually saw it in the firehouse yesterday. Yet it isn't posted on Slashdot til today.

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Re:Relics by berashith · 2012-04-03 02:54 · Score: 2

I have been waiting for the HeathKit tablet.

So, what happens... by The-Forge · 2012-04-03 02:54 · Score: 2

So does this mean a wyse60 emulation now becomes a dell60 emulation. Oh the poor termcap databases, how will it ever deal. :)

Re:Curious... by berashith · 2012-04-03 02:56 · Score: 2

not tough to break in to, but now Dell has an existing installed base, some internal knowledge and relationships to support that base, and one less competitor to deal with. Buying this is probably cheaper than spending a year or two building it up.

Um...patents? by robla · 2012-04-03 02:57 · Score: 4, Informative

From TFA: "The company has more than 180 patents, both issued and pending, covering its solutions, software and differentiated intellectual property."

Re:Um...patents? by DigiShaman · 2012-04-03 04:02 · Score: 2

Basically same thing nVidia did to 3Dfx. Purchase the company for its IP.

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The Touch by SuperKendall · 2012-04-03 02:57 · Score: 2

No more of this glass sheet crap, give me about 50 toggle switches and blinking lights.

Touch doesn't get much better than manually flipping a toggle switch. Ahh.

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Re:Curious... by Caratted · 2012-04-03 03:22 · Score: 2

I deployed three Dell PCoIP thin clients for some public kiosks in a hotel. 16 months ago.

They had the best pricing and the integration with VMView was seamless. What's that about an existing installed base? This is about patents.

OpenThinClient.Org and $45 diskless from Geeks.com by charnov · 2012-04-03 03:50 · Score: 2

I use OpenThinClient.Org and $45 diskless workstations from Geeks.com. Works better than the $250 HP's we have.

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Re:How unfortunate: Wyse and not Wang by damn_registrars · 2012-04-03 04:08 · Score: 4, Funny

Just think of all the Slashdot jokes that could have been...

That doesn't mean we can't still make Wang jokes.

Q: Who was the first female computer programmer?

A: Eve - she had an Apple in one hand, and a Wang in the other.

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Why(se)? by unixisc · 2012-04-03 05:00 · Score: 3, Funny

You don't think this was a wyse decision?

Dell me about it!

Re:Tactical facepalm by jellomizer · 2012-04-03 05:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Thin clients are not for the end user they are for the administrators and the people who spend the money.
You will almost always be better off if you have a full speed desktop at your beck and call vs. a Thin Client... However those clients can stay current much longer and at the cost of a beefy server so Admins don't have to do desktop fixes and you don't need to upgrade every system every 3 years.

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Dell to acquire Wyse by ChrisMaple · 2012-04-03 05:37 · Score: 2

But not wisdom.

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Re:Tactical facepalm by datavirtue · 2012-04-03 05:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

Suzie in Records doesn't need performance, and she doesn't need a USB pot to plug her iPod into, or a hard drive on which to install Weatherbug, or an Application Data folder in which to foothold a rootkit. She needs a fucking terminal. Why run around in circles supporting PCs with Windows and all the necessary infrastructure needed to dick with things that have nothing to do with the business. Use an application server, a terminal (thin-client), and walk away.

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Re:Relics by Chris+Mattern · 2012-04-03 05:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Because 64 bits ought to be enough for anybody!

Re:How unfortunate: Wyse and not Wang by R3d+M3rcury · 2012-04-03 06:58 · Score: 2

An old friend of mine used to work at Wang. He was emphatic about that. "I do not work for Wang. I work at Wang!"

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