Thin client advice

[john]

I run a lab of Biostars (higher class shuttles) now fine they are on the desks still, but you can stack one on top of another, and still they are the same size as a normal midi tower PC, and if coupled with flat screens you can squish them in very well. Will post pictures of my latest project in a before and after setup when its starts, sort of a storyboard of developing a 21st century IT suite from the depths of Win 95 all the way through to XP Pro and Server 2003 with Censornet, all in 4 days!

[woody]

Ric, thanks for your advice and offer of chat. If we were to go thin client, there would be two rooms back to back of 64 clients. I can guarantee that for many lessons, they will all be in use at the same time bar one or two. But reading your other posts, it's not the cost of licensing that puts me off. I know that you can do it for at least the same price as standard desktops. What worries me is the processing power. I just know that in the IT dept, they will want to do full screen video and video editing, and other processor killing tasks like that. Now then, put into the picture 60 or so thin clients editing 20 minutes of video in Adobe Premiere.

Will a thin-client system live up to that?

[ChrisH]

You wont be editing video with a thin client system it cant do it.

[CyberNerd]

If you want full screen iMovie style videoediting then you would be better buying traditional desktops. If you want to create small flash type movie presentations for use in websites/e-books then thin clients will be fine.The newest (v4) of Citrix has much improved sound/video capabilities than previous versions (don't even think of using rdp for this sort of thing). The enterprise edition of Citrix also supports an application isolation environment, the CPU limit on an application can be set so that users can't geek all the resources.

[CyberNerd]

Now then, put into the picture 60 or so thin clients editing 20 minutes of video in Adobe Premiere.

sorry I only just read this bit. No, IMO thin client won't cope with this sort of thing. Our media dept use a dedicated suite of macs for videoediting, ICT copes well enough with flash movies.

[john]

The SFF Biostars I mentioned get used for CAD CAD and have I have videoedited on my one of them with no issues, and for £300 you cannot go wrong with them really

[NetworkGeezer]

The SFF Biostars I mentioned get used for CAD CAD and have I have videoedited on my one of them with no issues, and for £300 you cannot go wrong with them really

Were you the only user on the server at the time?

[john]

They are not TCs, i was giving another viable option instead of TCs for him. I have not got a TC setup, although we did look at one for the CAD CAM setup, but we decided we didn't need one when we got these Biostars.

[Ric_]

@John: The SFF Biostar machines that I have are pretty naff - not the best build quality that I have ever seen.

@woody: Before going down the thin client route, you need to decide what a suite of computers is going to be used for. Most people aren't going to have 60 licenses for Adobe Premier and will maybe have a media suite of 10-15 machines. In this instance, you would install the suite of more powerful machines (poss. dual processor with special video capture cards and HUGE hard disks) so that you can do your video editting efficiently. For everyday use you then simply run the terminal services client and hook into your standard desktop.

A standard IT suite is normally just used for general office productivity tasks, light multimedia, a bit of web design, etc. For this you can do everything on the terminal server and have pretty 'dumb' clients. This is where you are able to lower TCO - extend the life of hardware, reduce power consumption, reduce heat output (esp. with TFTs - to the extent where you no longer need air con)...

[andy]

...reduce heat output (esp. with TFTs - to the extent where you no longer need air con)...

LOL - we'll probably get to that stage, just as they start to consider the possibilty of us being allowed air con! On second thoughts... probably not.



Andy

[john]

Ric, I use the 220M and 220K machines and they are both really really good machines, I have used a shuttle in the past, and was not impressed, I thought it felt cheap, but have had no issues with these. But time will tell, just going to put 10 into a primary school next week, will take pics and pos the before and afters.

[Ric_]

@john: I didn't buy these (inherited from predeccessor) so they may be the most baisc model - very much plastic and tin foil cases - and not a patch on the shuttle. Anyway... this is going off topic.

Buy a HP T5125 for £135 - solidly built, no moving parts, minimal heat output, silent and won't break if you bounce them off a kid's head