RDI Intros Portable Unix Workstation

Larger screen, removable storage intended for general users

By Mary Hayes

DI Inc. is trying to expand the market for portable Unix workstations with a system that it claims will finally meet the needs of general workstation users. RDI's Solaris-based UltraBook includes a 200-MHz UltraSparc 1 chip, a 14.1-inch color display, and 9 Gbytes of removable storage-making it more attractive to workstation users that have been put off by the limited performance and small screens of older models.

The UltraBook is also much less costly than earlier RDI models. It's priced about 50% more than comparable desktop systems from Sun Microsystems; older models were two to three times the price of comparable desktops.

RDI, an eight-year-old company in Carlsbad, Calif., has built a business providing systems to users who need a portable Unix workstation almost regardless of cost-such as military officials conducting field operations or geophysicists collecting data at the site of a natural disaster. RDI officials hope the UltraBook will help the company break out of those niches. "Older systems appealed to that 1% to 2% of users that couldn't compromise," says Carl Baldini, VP of engineering at RDI. "With this type of product, we expect to see more desktop substitution, in much the way that the laptop has replaced the desktop in the PC market."

The UltraBook starts at $11,995. An Ultra 1 desktop system from Sun, with similar performance, costs less than $9,000. The UltraBook comes with 32 Mbytes of memory, expandable to 512 Mbytes, and includes up to 9 Gbytes of storage. With one battery pack, the unit weighs 8.5 pounds.

Analy sts say the UltraBook is impressive, but they still aren't convinced that a typical Unix workstation user will pay more money for a portable. RDI's UltraBook is a big improvement, but still falls a little short in price/performance and screen size, says Keren Seymour, an analyst at the Mountain View, Calif., office of International Data Corp. "Certain markets can take advantage of a portable Unix workstation-such as financial traders, software engineers who can work anywhere, and CAD users who perhaps want to take their design to a factory floor," adds Seymour. "But Unix workstation users generally require large screens, and lots of memory and disks."

Sun tried to enter the portable workstation market with its Voyager line in 1994 but discontinued it within two years. The Voyager never offered more than 48 Mbytes of memory or 810 Mbytes of storage, and weighed 13 pounds.

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