Wyse Technology and StayOnline Provide Hawthorn Hotel Guests with In-Room Computing via Thin Clients

Wyse Winterm Thin Clients Deployed in Hotel Rooms Eliminate the Need for Many Road Warriors to Travel with Laptop Computers

San Jose, CA – 11/03/2002 - Wyse® Technology the worldwide leader in secure, managed thin clients, today announced StayOnline, Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia, is helping road warriors and frequent travelers cope with some of the challenges presented by recent world events by eliminating the need to carry laptop computers in order to access information from the road. StayOnline is currently deploying approximately 4,000 Wyse Winterm™ 8360SE Windows® Custom-Application Terminals (WinCAT) in hotel rooms at Hawthorn Hotels nationwide. Wyse thin-client units located in rooms of the hotel chain enable guests to access Web-based business software and corporate extranets, as well as online secure file storage applications, e-mail, e-fax, and other Web-based applications.

StayOnline is the complete solutions provider for the hospitality industry, providing high-speed Internet access and high-end applications to assist hotel guests in conducting day-to-day business tasks while traveling. In past efforts to offer high speed Internet access to travelers, hotels offered ports that required the user to provide their own laptop, while others offered in-room personal computers with high cost of ownership. StayOnline, an Authorized Winterm Partner, has provided Hawthorn Hotels with an in-room thin-client solution with either a standard CRT or Flat Panel Moniter, built-in multimedia capabilities and a full-size keyboard and mouse. Optimized for Web surfing, the Winterm 8360SE employs the most popular features and plug-ins such as RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Java Virtual Machine and Internet Explorer 5.5.

"By choosing the Wyse thin-client solution, we are providing Hawthorn Hotels with the best possible desktop experience, while minimizing the costs of deploying, managing and updating our devices. Hawthorn has added a valuable business and entertainment service to its guests," said Antonio DiMilia, President of StayOnline. "Wyse thin clients offer a very strong value added proposition for our clients, the units drive guest usage which provides a more acceptable revenue model to our customers."

Wyse Provides Ideal Solution for Hospitality Industry

As StayOnline searched for a solution to address the specific needs of the hospitality industry, it turned to the proven Wyse thin-client approach for a PC experience without the PC costs. What places the Wyse Winterm device above the crowd is Wyse's ability to tailor the product to StayOnline's personalized needs. This provides very high levels of flexibility for organizations such as StayOnline that require applications to reside on the desktop, but still want to retain the management benefits and cost reductions of true thin-client computing.

"Due to enhanced security in the travel industry after September 11, many business travelers are now electing to travel without laptops," said Brad Rowland, director of product management at Wyse Technology. "By using Web-based applications, business users can now securely log on to corporate networks via in-room Wyse thin-client devices and have the same experience as if they were at their desk. The Winterm 8000 series provides guests a highly secure computing, communications and browsing experience."

The Winterm 8360SE WinCAT is based on Microsoft's Windows NT Embedded operating system, and is designed with an optimized Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5 browser. With support for Microsoft RDP, Citrix ICA and 15 additional terminal emulations, the Winterm 8360SE can drop into virtually any environment and begin paying immediate dividends in simplicity of management and reliability of performance.

About Wyse Technology

Wyse is the #1 vendor the world's largest businesses and institutions trust for scalable thin-client computing solutions. Wyse provides the hardware, software, and services that shift computing complexity to the network, reducing cost, liberating IT departments from unnecessary support and maintenance functions, empowering users to be more productive in their jobs, and protecting and improving access to critical information and business applications. Headquartered in San Jose, California with offices worldwide, Wyse has been #1 in thin-client market share for the last eight years, enjoys a close partnership with Citrix Systems, and has been named Microsoft "Embedded Partner of the Year" for three years. Wyse customers include FedEx, Best Buy (Canada), Quaker Foods, and Gold's Gym.

For more information, visit the Wyse website at http://www.wyse.com or call 1-800-GET-WYSE