Axel AX3000 m70 for Lesson Monitor

[SwedishChef]

Just a quick note to say thanks to Matt at Axel for some great technical advice, and some feedback for you all.

In two days 2 techincians were able to distribute 50... yes 50!!! terminals/monitor/mouse/keyboard to classrooms, the terminal mounts on the back of the monitor.

I made a template terminal config, sucked up the config and used the AUTO config service to deploy this to new terminals plugged onto the network.

I have setup DHCP vendor to identify the auto config server so when the device boots up we didn't have to setup per terminal, we just got one out of the box plugged it all in and switched it on.

I also made the RDP connection start sims.net upon startup so it is only used as a lesson monitor/sims.net terminal which is now used for electronic registration.

Works like a charm, now just need to figure out how the jocks in PE take their registers!!!

Any questions, don't hesitate to ask or PM.

Gary

[Butuz]

Sounds like a good setup matey! Should be darned easy to maintain - SIMS update? What sims update? I just updated 50 clients in 2 minutes

Butuz

[ICTNUT]

Hi All,

Just thght I would give a little bit of feedback and priase for these guys.

I have ordered 26 of these little units which I got wednesday last week pre 10:30am and by 3:30pm on that day they were installed, confirgured, secured, tagged and connected to our Server 2008 TS without an issue.

The config of the boxes is REALLY easy, there is also an auto config option where you can have the config file sat centrally and the units simply pull it down but to be honest it took us around 20 secs per box to do the config.

Well done chaps, I am currently considering another 20 of these for other areas of the school I am that happy with them.

If there is only one suggestion I would make and that would be to have a facility to lock the unit to the back of the monitor. There is a VESA compliant mount that comes with this unit but once in place the unit simply sits on the mount and can be removed by anyone, I got around this by using some heavy duty cable ties which will put people off but it would be nice to have this.

[Butuz]

If there is only one suggestion I would make and that would be to have a facility to lock the unit to the back of the monitor. There is a VESA compliant mount that comes with this unit but once in place the unit simply sits on the mount and can be removed by anyone, I got around this by using some heavy duty cable ties which will put people off but it would be nice to have this.

Yep agree with this - would be real handy to be able to actually bolt/screw the units to the VESA mount.

Butuz

[plexer]

What backend setup are you people using with these I saw 2008 Terminal Server mentioned.

Ben

[ICTNUT]

Yes we are using Server 2008 TS but you have to remember to trun off the new Network Authentication method in2008 as these units do not yet support this, however, I have been told that they are working on this.

[Butuz]

2003 Here

Butuz

[Paul10k]

Just put in a class room full of the latest M80F Axel clients. So far so good - really fast, neat with them screwing to the monitor and £100 less than a Wyse.

[KWestos]

Just put in a class room full of the latest M80F Axel clients. So far so good - really fast, neat with them screwing to the monitor and £100 less than a Wyse.

Hi, could you give me an idea as to how much these clients are. I am in the process of looking at the moment. I need a good reason NOT to use the old PC's

[Paul10k]

They cost us £150 each for the new 80F models. So far so good no complaints from the abusers.

[Axel]

It's hard to mount an arguement against using old pcs as tcs if you already have them....One point to consider is power consuption, PCs typically take about 200 watts (a typical linux or WinCE terminal about 20 watts), and the Axel 5watts. if you do the maths the Axel device will have paid for itself in energy savings alone before its warranty expires when compared to a PC! Thin clients are also totally silent having no hd or fans. You would also expect to spend a lot less time configuring and supporting. Thin clients also boot much quicker, in about three seconds.......

[Voodoo]

Just to add that we have also decided to diversify our desktop a bit, and are adopting Axel terminals in some roles (with TS 2008 backend).

Only a small number (5) to start with, initially to replace PC's in Admin and Management locations. We spent some time testing out a couple of different models with the help of Axel and were very impressed with the M80F model...ideal for the role and scored highly on all counts (price, performance, ease of management, TCO).

On top of that Axel themselves provided us with exceptional support at our evaluation stage when we were having some local technical problems. So if these first 5 shape up as we expect, I hope to see a lot more of them on site in the future.

[SpuffMonkey]

I just want to add that as a company, they have been a pleasure to deal with. We've just deployed 60 of the MF80 boxes - and they were so easy to setup it was a breeze.

We previously used Wyse TC units - not bad in themselves, but in a like for like comparison, the Axel box blew them away. The graphics on the Axels were much faster - and while you can't really watch video on them, the frame rate was significantly better than the Wyse boxes.

A big plus for us was the ease of management - they come with a management console program where you can fully manage all the boxes and set individual settings - an improvement on the Wyse which had to be all set alike - annoying when you have different monitor sizes in different rooms - they can also be fully locked down from the console - the Wyse were set as all or nothing - so to implement a change, they all had to be unlocked, and change done then all locked up again.

Another "nice" feature was the short VGA cables that can be bought with them - when VESA mounting - it makes for a very tidy desk deployment.

Matthew from Axel was very helpful, as we had some initial problems getting the appro box to work, due to some settings on our Citrix environment - but these were all dealt with, even though we hadn't committed to buy anything at that stage - he also gave my Senior Tech plenty of help in optimising the build and use of the management soft.

So - top marks - well worth considering if you are looking to get some TCs.

[Paul10k]

Wish I'd known about the short vga cables

Pity the mains cables are so long as well.

[Axel]

Paul,

Give me a call, I am sure we can sort something out regarding the little VGA cables. They didn't exist on our pricelist when you bought your terminals. Since then we have introduced a few school specific options as more schools have begun using Axel terminals and have given us helpful feedback.

The power cable is 180cm long, which is the same length as a standard 'kettle type' computer mains cable. We had to select a length, and this seemed a suitable choice....