Thin Clients. Anybody have any experience with them?

[Roasted]

I've been reading more and more about thin clients and I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of them.

I work for a large school district. Based on the type of software we run, I can't imagine a thin client setup would be feasible, considering the students use a lot of somewhat decent processor intensive applications. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.

In the library, where the most they do is use Office 2003 and Internet Explorer to utilize Google for research projects, I can see thin clients being beneficial. But in pretty much all other instances, unless you can run videos and all kinds of other stuff over the network without any congestion, I can't imagine it'd be beneficial.

Every pros/cons article I read about them are always extremely biased, which makes me want to call BS and just exit out and stop reading. I've talked to a few people who say almost always thin clients have been more expensive than thick client setups, which makes me wonder...

Has anybody been in an IT position where you use thin clients? Can you provide any unbiased advice and input about what you thought of the thin client setup? It seems VERY nice, but only in certain applications.

[jrusso2]

If its done right, its hard to tell its not local.

[Icehuck]

I've been reading more and more about thin clients and I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of them.

I work for a large school district. Based on the type of software we run, I can't imagine a thin client setup would be feasible, considering the students use a lot of somewhat decent processor intensive applications. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.

In the library, where the most they do is use Office 2003 and Internet Explorer to utilize Google for research projects, I can see thin clients being beneficial. But in pretty much all other instances, unless you can run videos and all kinds of other stuff over the network without any congestion, I can't imagine it'd be beneficial.

Every pros/cons article I read about them are always extremely biased, which makes me want to call BS and just exit out and stop reading. I've talked to a few people who say almost always thin clients have been more expensive than thick client setups, which makes me wonder...

Has anybody been in an IT position where you use thin clients? Can you provide any unbiased advice and input about what you thought of the thin client setup? It seems VERY nice, but only in certain applications.

They are great for certain applications but they need a decent network to run effectively on. I wouldn't put basic office apps on them but use them to deliver specialized apps. This way you only need to install the thin clients.

[Wiebelhaus]

It's great for simple computing , You basically create a user space (200mb) on the server and then they log onto the server and access their data from there , Think Novell Groupwise (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/) or EyeOS (http://eyeos.org/). It's good for complete control ,user Management and corporate infrastructure.

If I was going to do this right now , I'd go with an eyeOS setup. Matter of fact eyeOS has a specific setup for schools (http://eyeos.com/en/schools). Also if I'm not mistaken I think eyeOS is FOSS?

Anyway , I'd like an update on what you decide to do , Please add me to your contacts. You can find my info in my Sig , Cheers.

[monsterstack]

How about licensing costs? Logic tells me that serving up an expensive application and piping it through the tubes would be cheaper than obtaining licences for all of the computers in your building. Does it actually work out like that in practice or not?

[Roasted]

How about licensing costs? Logic tells me that serving up an expensive application and piping it through the tubes would be cheaper than obtaining licences for all of the computers in your building. Does it actually work out like that in practice or not?

Due to the size of the district we've always gotten site licenses, to which we just pop the software in an image and blast it to the computers that need it. So it hasn't really been an issue for us.

If we were a business that just relied on office software all day I can see that being a solid bonus, but the more I think about it the more I'm not seeing how thin clients would be all that beneficial to us. Maybe I'm just being naive but, based on what I've read over the last few hours I'm just not sold on it. It seems too iffy. "You can save on power costs, if you don't mind losing out on scanner and printer and other peripheral device support." Yeah, sounds like a plan!...

I can see the benefits easily. I just don't think it's all that feasible in a school environment which relies heavily on certain instances of software, often times processor intensive, along with educational videos that are often watched.

And FYI - I'm not the one making the decision. I was just having a talk with my boss today who brought it up, however his thoughts on it were about the same as mine. At first I was excited to see what thin clients could do but ultimately I wasn't overly excited about it.

Plus the costs of the thin client boxes aren't that much cheaper, if at all, than a stand-alone desktop. The ONLY thing I can see from a blunt point of view is that a thin client would consume a bit less power when in use, however, all labs are shut off at night so it wouldn't be "that" substantial of a difference, in my opinion...

But like I said, maybe I'm just not seeing the whole picture. I'm trying to look at this with an open mind and I'm just not seeing how it would be overly beneficial to an educational institution which utilizes software that is often times significantly more processor intensive than your typical office 2003 applications.

[Icehuck]

Due to the size of the district we've always gotten site licenses, to which we just pop the software in an image and blast it to the computers that need it. So it hasn't really been an issue for us.

If we were a business that just relied on office software all day I can see that being a solid bonus, but the more I think about it the more I'm not seeing how thin clients would be all that beneficial to us. Maybe I'm just being naive but, based on what I've read over the last few hours I'm just not sold on it. It seems too iffy. "You can save on power costs, if you don't mind losing out on scanner and printer and other peripheral device support." Yeah, sounds like a plan!...

I can see the benefits easily. I just don't think it's all that feasible in a school environment which relies heavily on certain instances of software, often times processor intensive, along with educational videos that are often watched.

And FYI - I'm not the one making the decision. I was just having a talk with my boss today who brought it up, however his thoughts on it were about the same as mine. At first I was excited to see what thin clients could do but ultimately I wasn't overly excited about it.

Plus the costs of the thin client boxes aren't that much cheaper, if at all, than a stand-alone desktop. The ONLY thing I can see from a blunt point of view is that a thin client would consume a bit less power when in use, however, all labs are shut off at night so it wouldn't be "that" substantial of a difference, in my opinion...

But like I said, maybe I'm just not seeing the whole picture. I'm trying to look at this with an open mind and I'm just not seeing how it would be overly beneficial to an educational institution which utilizes software that is often times significantly more processor intensive than your typical office 2003 applications.

Honestly, I can't see much use for it for a school district. However, in a large enterprise with 1000-2000 nodes it would work great for.

[Roasted]

Honestly, I can't see much use for it for a school district. However, in a large enterprise with 1000-2000 nodes it would work great for.

When you say that, are you insinuating that a school district has less than 1000-2000 nodes?

Because we have about 1800 pieces of equipment in the district. It's a very large district.

I just wasn't sure if you were speaking from a standpoint of the fact that districts tend to use a wide variety of software whereas most businesses rely on office applications, for the most part, and that's about it.

[gn2]

At work we have Wyse terminals which run Xp Embedded.

They connect over an ADSL connection and applications are accessed via Citrix.

They are adequate for basic internet browsing and some light office applications, nothing more.

In use they are fairly unreliable and frequently lose connection.

[Roasted]

At work we have Wyse terminals which run Xp Embedded.

They connect over an ADSL connection and applications are accessed via Citrix.

They are adequate for basic internet browsing and some light office applications, nothing more.

In use they are fairly unreliable and frequently lose connection.

If you had to make the call as to whether or not to choose stand-alone desktops versus thin clients in the future, what would your opinion be?

Thin?
Thick?
Mixture?

Thanks!

[gn2]

Speaking strictly as a user and not an admin, I wouldn't consider thin clients at all.

Things like the Acer Revo/Hornet or the Eee box would be a much better option in my opinion.

As for mixture, definitely yes.
A "one size fits all" policy only guarantees you won't please everyone.

You need to give people the correct tools for the job.
If the computer hardware requirements of the jobs vary, you need a mix of hardware.

[Wiebelhaus]

This is the way to go:

http://ltsp.sourceforge.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Terminal_Server_Project

Story about successful deployment: (http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/16798-linux-makes-the-grade-in-california-schools)

[OscarFoxtrot]

...I work for a large school district. Based on the type of software we run, I can't imagine a thin client setup would be feasible, considering the students use a lot of somewhat decent processor intensive applications. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, etc.

Thin-client is great for processor-intensive applications *especially* somewhere like a school. Class 1 you can have 30 students hammering the CPU, Class 2 you have 30 students typing up assignment, Class 3 you have 30 students listening to Sir and not using the computers at all. To do this with PCs with flexibility to use any room for any purpose, you'd need 90 high spec PCs. With thin client you just balance the load across a few apps servers. Need more power, just add more servers or upgrade the servers; replaced servers can be cascaded down to file/print/proxy. (And when you do this, you don't have 90 semi-obsolete PCs to dispose of, and aren't taking classrooms out of service to do the upgrades.)


In the library, where the most they do is use Office 2003 and Internet Explorer to utilize Google for research projects, I can see thin clients being beneficial. But in pretty much all other instances, unless you can run videos and all kinds of other stuff over the network without any congestion, I can't imagine it'd be beneficial.

You can run video over the network; obviously the network needs to have enough capacity. Gigabit to the classroom with proper switching and configuration. But networking kit tends to have a longer lifespan than PCs, so it's worth investing in.


Every pros/cons article I read about them are always extremely biased, which makes me want to call BS and just exit out and stop reading. I've talked to a few people who say almost always thin clients have been more expensive than thick client setups, which makes me wonder...

Specialised thin clients do seem to be expensive compared to low-end PCs, but of course you have to compare n thin-clients + y servers vs. n powerful PCs. However, thin-client can be an excellent way of re-using outdated PCs and if you can get a donation of a classroom-load of PCs you can get a computer lab set up very quickly and cheaply.

They aren't suitable or ideal for everything, of course, video-editing would be one example.

If you want to play with thin-client you can just boot some of your existing PCs off a CD/floppy/USB as thin clients and use an edubuntu server.

I've no experience of thin-client in MS Windows however.