N-Computing: Anyone using?

[multipoint]

Right.... Finally convinced NComputing to send us 30 L300 devices to test theory against practice. The NComputing L300 devices will soon be released in LG Netmonitor form too called N+; basically they're thin clients with processing power for transcoding / decompress, recompress etc that you plug into your LAN, and hang a switch off the back of the host which could be anywhere, so no probs with close proximity. No matter how well we specced the host, we could only get 22 users running before the other 8 users blue screened when running a full screen DVD which happened to be Hancock. CPU, memory usage for the 22 was fine, however with each concurrent user being started the 23rd user onwards just stalled. The other 22 seats worked perfectly normally. Techies were impressed to get 22 working however and reckon this could be used by business and secondary school upwards. According to NComputing the L300 is in big demand. Anyone bought any? Any feedback?

Also got 2 of the latest 4 port Graphics card and tested a SoftXpand 8 user machine with an i7 host. Great performance. Techies were blown away looks like a borough of London will be the first in the UK to take this solution according to SoftXpands UK disty.

Checked out 2 schools one in Solihull and one in Sheffield who have a brand name PC beginning with V with Multiple graphics cards running MPS2010. Looks like one of the best close proximity solutions I've seen, they tested 80 different software applications, and only the ones written for Windows 98 caused issues. Not exactly CAD CAM level performance but movie make and video editing was fine for up to 6 users. Microsoft are penning the case studies now I believe.

Still not been able to source FiddleHead in the UK, which is a real shame as the solution looks cool but could be made redundant with MPS 2010 and off the shelf VGA over USB devices.

[multipoint]

Update on LG: They are rebranding Net Monitor and the NComputing X series variant will be called the LG D series (direct attach) and the NComputing L series variant will be called the LG E series (Ethernet attach).
Update on SoftXpand: They will be expanding the capabilities of the software to allow 30 users, and now have a LAN solution too. Appears that licensing is now handled with a letter from MiniFrame taking liability away from the end user.

[apoth0r]

One of the issues I've had with the nComputing stuff is the software doesn't work if you have certain updates installed, I've had to go through uninstall security updates one-by-one until I found the problem one and then bugger me if Windows Update didn't automatically install it the next day!

Had exactly the same problem after spending an afternoon making sure all the school computers were up-to-date only to find it wouldnt work with a certain patch. Was fuming!!!!
Personally I don't think they are that brilliant, some issues with county filtering, logging onto the filtering service for kids to use email only allows 1 student to login on 3 PC's.
Unfortunately it was the headteacher of the primary school that really wanted them so I just had to make do with what was there.

[plexer]

Checked out 2 schools one in Solihull and one in Sheffield who have a brand name PC beginning with V with Multiple graphics cards running MPS2010. Looks like one of the best close proximity solutions I've seen, they tested 80 different software applications, and only the ones written for Windows 98 caused issues. Not exactly CAD CAM level performance but movie make and video editing was fine for up to 6 users. Microsoft are penning the case studies now I believe.

I'm looking at this kind of option for out ART Suite would it work for Photoshop?

Ben

[multipoint]

Hi Ben, photoshop is fine on MPS 2010.

[Geeksme]

Ben, MPS 2010 will be ok running Photoshop but you'll get much better performance using SoftXpand due to native GPU processing. I have a setup running Photoshop and autocCAD. Looks like they offer a free trial so you can test.