Thin Client uses

darkmanx

darkmanx

darkmanx

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28 May 2009
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25
Just wondered what kind of instances any of you guys use thin clients for. We had a load in for testing but as its education they were deemed not to fit in with the strategy. (mainly because they cant watch you tube/streaming media very well on them). Its the same situation in offices to we can't replace PC's with them as people seem to want everything i.e. streaming media sites etc.

What other uses could you think of where they may be of benefit? Also what software have you found best for them, they were being used here just with remote desktop to a terminal server. We have a mix of units wyse, hp, jack pc's. Some of the wyse/hp have windows xpe others linux

Cheers
 
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Door stops, book ends..

I deploy call centre solutions as part of my job, so we use them for the agents / diallers who are on the phones. we Use HP5735 (IIRC) thin clients, which then RDP to our terminal server. You can get lock the agents down using GPO, etc. Pretty decent solution to be fair, we have around 60 users on a terminal server in one of our higher end solutions. The problem you can have is sound mapping over RDP.

Our thin client uses a lightweight version of Linux which then uses RDP is my answer to the second question.
 
If you want streaming web media, there's a few things you can do

Citrix Xenapp gives you a few technologies which help - Speedscreen multimedia buffers the video to the client and renders it locally, very effective. This only works with certain video formats, not flash etc. Wyse have a similar offering called TCX which you can use with RDP to save the expense of buying Citrix.

Secondly, server to client content redirection - this basically opens the local web browser seamlessly when a web link is clicked. This allows flash etc to be played perfectly and it looks like its happening within the session.

In a simple office environment they are no brainers - management, software installation, power savings, noise levels etc. In education, or where the requirements are more heavy (either in terms of CPU/RAM on the server or multimedia requirements), it starts to become a bit more difficult. There are technologies out there that can help but they'll never give a full desktop experience (although future releases of XenDesktop promise to fix that)

In schools that I've done consultancy for, I've advocated a mixed environment - thin clients in office areas such as the bursars, teachers offices and in 6th form homework areas etc. Then in the computing labs, classrooms etc thick clients are used
 
The end users dont get everything they want. The get a client that will run the basic officie type apps they need to do their jobs.
I was involded in a rollout of over 4000 replacing desktops pc's. All sorts of moaning & complaining, cant do youtube, itunes etc etc. Well do it at home then!
These were sunrays who's rdp performace is without doubt the best I have ever seen.
 
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What he said ^^

I always tell people who are worried about upsetting staff that they are there to provide a service to the business in the most cost effective way possible, not to pander to the whims of every member of staff who wants ways to avoid doing work.
 
I wish it was that simple for us, working in education it seems what the teachers/students want they get! No matter how much hassle it causes us or how many hoops we have to jump through.
We had someone ripping copyrighted material to show in class and we deleted it off our file servers and management were like why did you do that its fine, we were like er no your breaking the law!! And the irony was the person doing it was a law teacher!!
 
I work in a secondary school been there for 6 months now. We are currently rolling out 200 thin client workstations across the school.

They are the SunRay 2 systems, work very well from the 100 we have put out so far. The other 100 going out over the summer holidays, finished by September.

Running from sunray servers, not sure on model numbers but they are very loud lol

The clients are very fast i have to say, never heard of thin clients before i started my first IT support role, sorry if my technical knowledge is a little lacking on describing the set up we have.

Runs youtube, internet, office very well.
 
darkmanx said:
I wish it was that simple for us, working in education it seems what the teachers/students want they get!
Click to expand...

Get over to Edugeek.net if you haven't already.

I'm lucky where I work management are sensible. But many schools do seem to have the attitude teachers are holier then thou and everyone else is a second class citizen.

There is a lot of discussion on edugeek both about thin client computing and school policies.

As for ideas, extra machines in the library (even if it's just one students can use for searching the library database), you could also make careers software available on them. Do you have PCs in every classroom? If you're not already doing online registration then it's likely in the future. Thin client would be fine for this.
 
cheers for the ideas guys, edugeek looks like a great website cheers Leblanc.

And yeah teachers are holier than us, crap on the bottom of your shoe is regarded a higher class citezen than us in IT! lol
 
Education lends itself perfectly to the Wyse WSM system.
Wyse Zero clients will "stream" the OS, and run it locally.

Full PC experience, Thin client energy costs, thin client management simplicity, all media works, low backend costs.

Its all the benefits, and none of the problems.
 
Large education solutions provider here and we're looking at using SunRay's - properly thin not like the HP solutions or some of the Wyse.
 
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