Over the past few days I have been experimenting with the RC version of Windows Thin Client, a cut down version of Windows 7 which will replace windows fundamentals for legacy PC's for those of us

with Software assurance.

Due to the impending upgrade to windows 7 over the summer, around 20 machines will not be able to run Windows 7. These machines are all fully functional but not worth upgrading. As a small school

we do not have the resources to deliver Virtual Desktops however we do have a schools agreement which could cover these machines. In previous years these laptops would end up as Linux terminals

with access only to the Internet. This year we will move to an EES agreement, meaning that these 20 machines could be licensed at no extra cost to the school.

WTPC has a minimum specification of 1GB of RAM, but I wanted to see if it would work with half of that.

My test machine consisted of a 6 year old Dell Latitude D510/1.6Ghz Celeron with 512MB of RAM and my aim was to see if I could make them more useful by installing WTPC and some software.

The software list consisted of:

Adobe Flash

Java RE

Office 2010 - Excel, Word and PowerPoint Only

IE 9

Sophos

Spec Ops Deploy Client Side Extension

On its own WTPC used around 250-300MB of RAM and started from cold in around a minute. I was pleasently surprised that I could add the machine to the domain and that WTPC supports group policy as a

full fat PC would. Logging in as a user was seemless, redirection is supported as is wireless.

With Sophos installed the machine ran with around 350-400MB of RAM being used when idle, still enough to allow either an Office Application or an Internet Explorer session.

Great stuff except..........

The licensing of WTPC is very restrictive - no productivity applications can be installed on it (meaning no local office!).

It is unfortunate that the licensing terms are so restrictive, WTPC would be a great product to increase the availability of machines in most primary schools whilst retaining a similar feel and the same applications that the full fat versions of windows has.

I am hoping someone at MS reads this & I can change their minds, but in the meantime I will be looking to run office over the web from the Live@edu solution we have.