dumb terminals

mrbios

mrbios

mrbios

Soldato
Joined
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Got 2 HP DL320 servers running terminal services, hopefully going to get another new server soon of higher spec but as all the terminals we use are very old HP ones i'm wondering.....

What advantages do you get out of buying more expensive dumb terminals? they say they have xxx amount of ram in them etc but surely the idea is that it uses the servers resources?

And secondly what terminals could you recommend for a school environment? looking for less than £200 per terminal really
 
Features mainly depends on the OS. The hardware spec of the thin-client is pretty immaterial. They're getting faster but I suspect it's more down to what components are being made rather than what's necessary.

XP Embedded terminals will allow things like web surfing without needing to log into the TS server. It's also possible to connect through USB devices such as iPAQs and mass storage devices to Citrix servers. They also allow more scope for customisation, eg VPN clients, 3G dongles.

We tend to use mainly Windows CE terminals (HP T5530) but the cheaper Linux one's would probably be fine. XPe ones can be a pain in the ass as they are vulnerable to the usual viruses, malware etc.

We used to use old discarded PCs, mainly 486 and P75 units which we setup with a custom DOS image that ran the Citrix client on a tiny 20Mb partition. We finally got rid of them about 12 months ago when the client was too old to properly work on the latest version of Citrix. Most of the PCs were well over 10 years old. They had hardly any moving parts and were old enough not to have fans strapped to everything to keep them cool. Give the user a nice enough keyboard, mouse and monitor and they didn't care what was under the desk!
 
Cheers MagicBoy, so as i won't want them to be able to do anything fancy at all - i'll want to use audio and usb devices through them but only pen drives, no other fancy features, the cheapest of the cheap terminals should be fine?

the Windows CE terminals are what we have at the moment, some variation of the T5000 series, and we're using server 2003, i assume the age of the terminals doesn't matter as to there ability to connect to server 2003 or server 2008 in the future when we move to it?
 
The age of the hardware is less of a problem than the clients supported in software. HP are good in updating the images with current version clients even when the model has been recently discontinued. The latest image for the T5540 added VMWare support for example that wasn't there originally, it also works on the older T5530.

If the current HP WinCE terminals do what you want then keep buying them. I've yet to find anything better for the money.
 
Careful, careful - hardware spec DOES make a difference to performance.

Obviously they dont need anything like the spec of a desktop, but you will see a performance difference with faster clients with more RAM - especially working with big images/PDFs, big spreadsheets etc.

If you want simplicity, look at the Wyse x10 range. Ftp server, a single INI file and 2 parameters in your DHCP server means you can take one out the box, plug it in and it's configured ready to go without so much as a reboot. They boot in a few seconds too. S10 is the small low spec one, V10 is better spec with more ports and C10 is small and high spec. We use the V10 and they're pretty good on the whole, performance is MUCH better than the S10 in our Citrix environment
 
T5540 is the current version of ye olde T5510 (via the T5520 and T5530).

Performance will likely be a little better - I'd forgotten that the really old HPs had a Transmeta Crusoe in them.
 
MagicBoy said:
T5540 is the current version of ye olde T5510 (via the T5520 and T5530).

Performance will likely be a little better - I'd forgotten that the really old HPs had a Transmeta Crusoe in them.
Click to expand...

What is Transmeta Crusoe? sounds like something out of monkey island! haha
 
The Crusoe was the first of the power saving CPUs. They had their own instruction set and translated x86 code on the fly so performance was ... variable. They were popular in ultra portables and early tablets for a short while. Then Intel came up with Centrino and they faded into obscurity. Intel and AMD ended up licensing the tech later on.
 
We've been using iGel's recently, they are pretty cool and some nifty features but they aren't not as simple as wyse.
 
Currently leaning in the direction of Wyse zero point clients with WSM server, looks very interesting and could be exactly the sort of thing i am after!
 
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