One would have expected that Windows 98 - the upgrade to Windows 95 - would have been the talk of Comdex. Instead, other Microsoft products - the Hydra and Windows CE - were the centre of attention.
Hydra is Microsoft's new Windows-based terminal-server which allows the creation of thin terminals that run Windows applications on a Windows NT server. The first test version of Terminal Server was released at Comdex.
Terminal Server has been developed jointly by Microsoft and Citrix based on Citrix's previous experience developing this technology for Windows NT 3.51.
Multiple client users run sessions on a single Windows NT 4 (and future version of NT) server but the display is delivered across the network to specialised thin client terminals, PCs, Macintosh computers and Unix workstations.
A key to the effort is the ability of Terminal Server to directly support Windows terminals which directly access terminal servers.
Network Computing Devices (NCD) of California used Comdex to become the first to demonstrate working Windows terminals running Windows CE as their native operating system, effectively extending Windows CE from handheld devices to the corporate desktop.
James Floyd, Microsoft's product manager for handheld PCs, said many companies were building embedded units using Windows CE, and Windows terminals were just one such product.