Looking at Dell computers, what is the difference between a computer marketed as a home PC vs. a workstation terminal? Is there something missing from a terminal desktop that means it won’t function as a stand alone computer straight out of the box? They seem much more powerful, albeit uglier/heavier/boxier, and cheaper given the CPU strength.
Are you looking at the Precision series? They are generally more expensive and more powerful than a standard desktop. The have options for multiple processors, more memory, more powerful and expensive video cards.
The definition of a workstation shifts to constantly be just a little bit better than what most desktop users can afford. This has been going on since at least the 1980s, when having a bitmapped screen, a mouse, and an Ethernet card were the hallmarks of workstation-hood. So, no, there is no single special feature that differentiates workstations from desktop computers.
With Dell I’ve generally found that they give you plenty of upgrade options that will let you purchase a lower end model and beef it up to include most all of the power and options in their upper end lines. It’s just that the lower end line starts with a lower, less expensive baseline.
IMHO, If the base model of the upper end line includes some doodads that you feel you don’t need it’s often better to start with one of their lower end models and beef it up to get what you want. On the other hand, if you want all of the features included in the base model of the upper end line it’s sometimes less expensive to start with that.
For laptops, there are differences in the physical design (in additional to the raw computational ability of the machine) between the consumer and business line that you should probably also consider. I’ve had both a Dell Inspiron and a Dell Precision laptop. The much more expensive Precision is lighter, thinner and has a much nicer feel to it in general. The battery seems to last longer too.
There are also differences in the support and warranty. For example, the low end Inspiron line only comes with 1 year of support, whereas the high end Precision line comes with 3 years of support. They have different support phone numbers too. I expect the high end products would get you shorter hold time on the phone and a more experienced tech directly.
You may have a misunderstanding about the term “workstation.” A workstation is not a terminal, it is a standalone computer. A terminal is the old “dumb” terminal that won’t do anything but talk to a mini or mainframe. I don’t think those were *ever *called workstations. Today, a workstation is a heavy-duty computer suitable for software development, engineering, audio/video, or other compute- and memory-intensive applications.
A home PC is generally intended to handle web browsing, email, word processing, and lightweight applications. Many home users want to get into other applications like video editing, and there are multimedia computers aimed at those special-purpose users.
It used to be that PC=DOS or Windows, Workstation=Unix/Linux.
Dumb terminal’s were also called workstations, before and overlapping with unix workstations.
“A bus stops at a bus station.
A train stops at a train station.
On my desk I have a workstation…”
Seriously, I’d say that it’s like the difference between a violin and a fiddle. There’s no inherent difference; the difference is what you use them for. If you use it to do work beyond the standard office tasks (like, anything that you’d leave working over a lunch break or overnight or over a vacation), then it’s a workstation, but an identical pile of hardware sitting in someone’s living room doing nothing but e-mail and YouTube videos is not.
But calling them that now is confusing, so don’t.
BTW: Workstations were never solely the domain of Unix, although Unix was probably used on most of them before companies started making workstations around x86 chips.
Before the x86 workstations, DEC sold VAXstation workstations running VMS and Xerox sold the Alto running its own OS. But you are correct in that the most common kind of workstation was like the ones Sun sold: A computer built around a RISC CPU running some variety of Unix subtly incompatible with everyone else’s variety of Unix.
After the first x86 workstations (not long after the 80386 was introduced in 1989), Microsoft entered the field in a big way and a large number of them ran Windows NT. Linux, which isn’t legally UNIX*, also came along during this era and rose to relevance rather quickly.
*(UNIX is a trademark of The Open Group. Unix is a style of operating system not really owned by anyone, but you’ll pay respect to ken if you know what’s good for you.)
I think Workstation is a term of the past, PC’s and Workstations tend to be very similar, at least in hardware configuration. Maybe some video editin workstations for example would have a special Quadro graphics card, but the rest of the components would be identical to a normal PC.
Ok, apparently there is not a real consistent use. I did notice that the cheaper business computers had very small hard drives, so I guess the idea was that it would have a powerful CPU but all the files it would access were on a networked system. Hence, they just appeared cheaper and would not be truly cheaper once they got home.
When I started work I had an ADM 3A, the dumbest of the dumb terminals, and no one ever called it a workstation. Workstations have processors, disk, and lots of memory. At work now I use a think client, which has a processor and memory, but no disk, and no one calls that a workstation either.
Back when workstations began PCs were way too underpowered to do anything particularly useful, and didn’t have the kind of graphics capability needed. Now even cheap PCs can outperform old workstations, so I don’t think there is a lot of difference. Big computing jobs have moved off of workstations anyhow to computer servers and compute farms.
I stated that they “were” called workstations in response to someone that mentioned they were never called workstations.
In addition they are still called workstations by some.
?
If you doubt me, or for those of you with limited exposure to the world of IBM mainframes and minicomputers, I would suggest you google for “3270 Workstation” or “5250 Workstation”.
You will see that even today there are products and articles that continue to use those terms.
Two examples of workstation terminology from google:
“A 3270 terminal was a non-programmable (sometimes called “dumb”) workstation.”
“To address this problem, an alternative form of Telnet was developed to implement the feature set of the 5250 workstation.”
Coming from a 3D animation perspective, a workstation is a PC that has a production video card (Quadro) in it, rather than one made for playing games (GeForce).
Other than that, the difference is a matter of degree, not of kind. (Though you’d be hard-pressed to find an option on a “PC” for dual 3.33GHz quad-core processors and 96GB of RAM. I configured a Boxx workstation up to $25k. <drool>)
When I Google 5250 workstation, I get a Gateway PC/Workstation. The wikipedia entry on the 5250 never mentions the term workstation. I’m not denying that the 5250 was called a workstation somewhere in IBM - anyone who has worked with IBM people know that they have their own vocabulary. For instance, embedded memories are called embedded arrays in IBM-speak, since someone once forbade any computer part from having a name that smacks of biology.
I believe I have seen workstation used to refer to the facilities used for a person to work, such as a desk, light, computer, etc. Perhaps a terminal could be a workstation in this sense. I started with mainframes, and I’ve never heard the term used to apply to a terminal, dumb or otherwise. Dumb terminals, btw, were used to refer to those without lots of internal control keys, memory, buffers and formatting ability. A BLIT, for example, was a terminal, but not a dumb one.
Wow, that takes me back. Although I had a PC at home, at work my first experience was with the 5250. Once I mastered using that (with a 300 baud external modem, no less), going to a 386 was simplicity itself.
Did you look at the other results? Here’s a quote from the second:
“Can anyone remember how to start a job (e.g. and enquiry) on a 5250 workstation either from another session”
And third:
“When the System Request key is pressed on a 5250 workstation, a system request command line appears at the bottom of the display”
etc.
I worked in that arena (IBM large computers) for a loooong time. I worked for a small and then a large software company and we, our customers, other vendors, IBM, etc. all used the terms “terminal” and “workstation” pretty much interchangeably (although terminal was probably used more).
Also, if you google for HP3000 and workstation you will see (but may have to dig to find it) HP used this same terminology back then.
The other term used for 5250 workstations was “boat anchor”. In the late 70’s and early 80’s they were big and heavy.
Since the OP’s question is in today’s context, it makes sense to answer it in today’s context. After all, the word “computer” originally meant a person, but we’re not trying to impose that meaning. What was called a workstation 20 years ago doesn’t help us answer the question.