Content area
Full Text
Summary - Maxspeed's Linux terminal, MaxTerm UT, has its share of problems, but if you're a consultant looking for a reliable and cost- effective answer for your clients, this UT is OK. (1,400 words)
his article was originally intended to be a standard review of the MaxTerm UT, offering pros, cons, and general thoughts about the product. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a review of the Maxspeed +One Station. (See Resources for a link.) Some readers could not see the benefit of the +One Station over more "hacker" approaches, like using recycled 486 machines as X terminals. So I'm writing this from the point of view of a consultant working to meet the needs of corporate clients.
Using refurbished 486s and monitors is a noble and fun venture (I have done it several times myself), but not a cost-effective solution for a consultant. You have to find the used equipment, test it, burn it in, and replace any parts that didn't work before you salvaged them. After installing Linux, you must make sure the video card can support at least 16-bit color (KDE and GNOME look horrible otherwise) and that XFree86 supports the video card. And that's just to get the machine up in an unconfigured state.
Next, you have to configure the system, which will take five to eight hours if everything goes well. A decent 15-inch monitor with a 30-day warranty costs about $100, and 486s cost anywhere from $30 to $150 depending on the hard drive and RAM size. Multiply your $120- per-hour consultancy rate by the average time spent (6.5 hours) and add the (conservative) cost of the hardware: the machine will cost roughly $870. This estimate does not include extra software or time spent acclimatizing the device to its new environment.
In walks the MaxTerm UT, a $499 (monitor not included) solution. It is a thin embedded device that runs Linux as its operating system and X as its graphical environment. UT stands for Universal Terminal, and after trying the MaxTerm on a customer site, I believe it has earned that distinction.
The MaxTerm UT's software makes it a truly remarkable device. I am not talking about just Linux (that's a...