Thin or Fat Client?

[kevinmcaleer]

I'm interested to know what everyone thinks about Thin Clients vs Fat Clients.

 

Thin clients seem ok for things like Microsoft Office and maybe a few 'lightweight' applications. But to do graphics creation/manipulation etc, I'm not so sure. Also licensing and hardware costs are still a consideration even on thin client (might even cost more if you use Citrix clients). You also have to have a much more powerful server, with thin clients.

 

Well thats what the myths are; what's the reality?

 

What kind of setup do people have? How many thin client workstations do you have, what spec are they? That kind of server do you have?

Is this for Curriculum or Administration?

 

-Kev

[ChrisH]

Ric is the man to answer this he has a big Citrix setup at his place.

[Ric_]

I think that I will have to wiki-fy this cos otherwise it will turn into the new roaming profiles.

 

Until I do this, a quick note that thin client will not solve all your financial problems.

 

You will not be able to edit video or compose a symphony on a thin client but these are tasks that you would always have bought specialist machines with beefy processors and specialist hardware anyway.

 

However, you will be able to keep your clients much longer and, if you have a lot of old hardware now, you will be able to extend its useful life somewhat.

 

You will also gain ease of administration since so much is done centrally, although it can be a struggle sometimes to make the crummy 16-bit educational software work properly.

[Shrimpersfan]

I think it depends on what apps are going to be used on the thin clients. If apps work fine and administration isn't too much of a headache then i would say thin clients all the way, however there are some things that some thin clients can't handle, IE - graphical and design applications. So i think it depends on the purpose overall.

 

First post, yay!

[Shrimpersfan]

Also, has anyone ever used a Netvoyager LX1010 thin client? We are currently testing one and i'm not too convinced. Were running Citrix metaframe server and when using it, it feels so slow and clumsy.

 

Anyone else had any experiences?

[Kitkatninja]

I use to use Citrix/thin client but removed it as it couldn't handle alot of the applications (especially multi-media ones). Maybe one day we'll go back to using thin client, but until that day - Fat all the way...

 

-ken

[Butuz]

Having trialed 30 thin clients in the business studies dept - I am rolling out another 70 thin clients to the 6th form and ICT department. Going to save us a bucket load of money in the long run.

 

Ultimate aim is to have thin clients in all ICT rooms apart from Art and Design Tech.

 

Butuz

[DSapseid]

Ultimate aim is to have thin clients in all ICT rooms apart from Art and Design Tech.

 

Yep thats my aim as well. Looking at implementing my first 30 either easter or summer. Budget permitting of course ;-)

[CyberNerd]

We've got over 300 TC's now. Still have fat clients for media/technology/music, and they only use those machines for specific tasks. All 'ordinary' work is Thin client. Definitely easier to maintain - The TC's network boot, so the only thing that goes wrong is cables unplugged and the odd psu popping, so really we only look after 9 Terminal servers and instead of 300 fat clients. The 40 odd fat clients we have are much more of a PITA because there is more to go wrong, they also cost more to replace and more to license.

[sLiDeR]

why not video editing etc??

[dhicks]

why not video editing etc??

 

Because all screen updates have to be handled by one machine, and video/graphics processing tends to be more than your average server can handle. Actually, our room of 18 Edubuntu thin clients can handle graphics editing with GIMP or Inkscape just fine, and we've had YouTube running on them just fine too (we hit Internet bandwidth limitations before the server has a problem).

 

--

David Hicks