Viewpoint - A nice attempt to socket to 'em.

Serious questions hang over Oracle's attempt to plug us all into the World Wide Web What will Oracle's Network Computer (NC) do to the PC market, if and when it becomes a reality? No one really knows. But the possibility of a device costing less than $500 that will run applets and connect to the World Wide Web is one which has quite a few manufacturers rattled.

Larry Ellison of Oracle has successfully set the agenda with his vision of the computing future and spurred Compaq, Intel, Sun and quite a few others to experiment with the idea of low-cost devices, simply on the basis that they can't afford not to.

Yet there are some fundamental questions about the NC that no one has so far answered satisfactorily. One centres on the components that these devices will use. After Ellison demonstrated the NC to developers early in March, it emerged that it will have at least 4Mb of memory, will probably use a Risc processor, and will need a colour screen and of course other circuitry and bits and pieces, such as a case. If you add up the cost of all these, you come perilously close to the $500 figure. Even if the price of memory slides, it will take large manufacturing volume and slim, slim margins to hit the right price point.

The second question is how will the machines be sold? Oracle does not want to get into the distribution business and although we hear much about how it loves its channel partner, only a few weeks ago it demonstrated its true nature when it launched Oracle Store, its first foray into the world of electronic distribution via the Internet. Who will do the fulfilment for Oracle software? Will it be done through the classic distribution model, a la Sphinx Level V, or will it be through companies like UPS?

The NC, we are told, could take many forms, including a slimline device that fits into a top pocket, but it's not at all clear how this is going to appeal to the mass of home users. Instead, we're far more likely to see the first devices in fairly large cardboard boxes.

If Oracle can produce the NC to its original target of September, it will be a piece of kit that many may want but few will be able to use.

Picture the scene. You live in North London or Newbury, and take delivery of a piece of kit with a plug on the end designed to connect it to the great wide world. What exactly do you plug it into?

To achieve anything like the speeds people will need, it will have to be connected to either a cable modem or an ISDN line. How many households do you know with these connections? And how does Oracle convince the average Briton to lash out even more money for the incredibly high ISDN installation charge or for a cable modem?

There's another problem here, too. So far, the cable providers in the UK have failed to agree on any kind of standard for such a modem. While they're busy carving up the market, digging up pavements and offering all sorts of incentives to make people switch from BT to Mercury, there's no reason why they should worry about what must seem to them like future technology. While there's a great deal of pressure on BT to slash the cost of ISDN installation, the telecoms giant seems disinclined to do so, preferring instead to pocket the money and salt it away to boost its already massive profits.

So the scene is set. Come September, Oracle releases its NC, aimed at the consumer market. Maybe it will embark on a massive advertising spree on worldwide TV to convince us that we need to spend our weekends browsing the WWW. Precious few ordinary families, I feel, will want to sacrifice their ordinary leisure activities for cyber-surfing.

Assuming for a moment that the NC becomes the home device par excellence, how will this affect the channel? There's practically no value-add in the NC proposition. The logistics boys may do well out of shipping cardboard boxes round the country but there will be little in it for dealers. A success for the NC would also have a catastrophic effect on people who depend on the storage business to make their living. It would have implications for every ISV in the world and kill the 5,000 small businesses in the UK which assemble and sell PCs. Is any of this going to happen? I don't think so. Households are buying multimedia PCs and many people who use powerful machines at work will not want a cut-down device at home.

Essentially, whatever the hype, the NC remains a dumb terminal and properly belongs to the dinosaur era. You won't need to shut up shop and take early retirement. In the words of Corporal Jones in Dad's Army: 'Don't panic!'