Primary Software and Thin Clients

[sreiach]

I've done ALOT of reading about thin clients for the last two days. Not sure why but I think I accidentally clicked an article about the Sun Ray Clients which started me going.

My question is for those who run them. How 'well' does primary software ie KidPix, MathBlaster etc Run over a thin client? I've read conflicting reports from 'Everything works great' to 'Sound is delayed and artifacts are left on the screen'. I'm sure alot of this depends on the network setup.

But lets assume I have a gigabit fibre backbone and 100mb to the desktops. Can a replace my primary school classroom computers with thin clients without the kids thinking their Magic School Bus isn't so magic?

Are XPe clients the way to go as they allow local processing of media and web browsing?

Ive read a lot of case studies about how thin clients have saved a school billions and billions and billions but they never go beyond office apps and web browsing.

[CyberNerd]

A recent review from Becta may awnser some of your questions:
http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.p...p_03&rid=11414

Sorry, I'm not in primary so can't speak specifically about any of the applications you mention, but AFAIK any of the primary applications found in Edubuntu will work in a Linux Terminal Server (LTSP).

I'm sure the (programatic) quality of primary is as bad or worse as the secondary stuff, some of hte older applications may cause problems. You can get away with installing poorer applications in Citrix Application Isolation Environments, but this requires the enterprise version of Citrix.
Sound isn't great quality, generally we set quality to 'medium' and it's ok -can be a bit laggy, depending upon server usage. Graphics are generally ok on Citrix, (better than RDP) - flash movies are fine, but don't try 3D effects.
Sometimes I see artifacts when log in from home (bandwidth) but nothing too bad

semi-fat clients are the way forwards IMO, local media and web browsing etc, (thinstation for DIY) or some of the wise terminals are quite good. With LTSP it's possible to share the load of certain applications with the client (not an XPe client)

[sreiach]

Thanks CyberNerd! Those Becta reports are exactly what I was looking for.

Being in the Bahamas there simply aren't any schools where I can go see thin clients in action. Or even see a Demo without flying someone in.

I was in fact looking at those Wyse S90's and V90's with XPe. It seems the majority of CPU cycles is being spent on web browsing -- so lets process that localy and free up the server side computing for other apps. Just seems like the best median between fat and true thin clients.

Unfortunately, we have too many legacy windows apps to be able to switch to a pure linux solution. As much as I would love to do it.

The Sun Ray 2 setup looks intriguing with their ability to run Windows, Linux and SunOS apps all at the same time. But I think its a bit much for an educational setup.

Thanks again for the info.