Corel is merchant of VNC

Canadian developer Corel has finally unveiled its video network computer (VNC), a thin client that allows video conferencing, six months after the initial proposed shipping date in May.

Corel first discussed the computer over a year ago. The final version includes CorelVideo Lan-based video conferencing and Conexus, a technology that competes with Citrix WinFrame and SCO's Tarantella.

It incorporates a StrongARM Digital Risc processor and has 32Mb of Ram.

The VNC sports on-board video capture and compression/ decompression for voice and video conferencing. Its operating system is based on Linux, a public domain version of Unix. On top of the operating system, the computer will run a Java Virtual Machine from Sun subsidiary JavaSoft.

Unlike other NCs, Corel's version has a hard disk, which is used as a persistent cache, allowing the device to operate when it is not connected to the network.

The VNC will ship with a number of Java-based multimedia tools, including a Web browser, a set of personal information tools, an HTML editor and an email client, as well as CorelVideo Intranetwork.

According to Oliver Bendzsa, communications manager at Corel, the computer will run Windows applications remotely from an NT server, using Conexus.

The product runs Windows applications on an NT server but allows them to be visualised on a client system via a Java-based client component.

The VNC is in limited production, and will be shipped into a small number of pilot projects with general availability planned for the first quarter of 1998. It will initially be sold in North America.