Terminals V PC’s and Wired V Wireless - Whats the consensus ?

[sjpage10]

I personally don't think technology is there (good enough) yet for wireless terminals that I believe would be the ideal.

I think we are just at the tipping point where technology is getting good enough but do you risk it , maybe another 5 or 10 years , don't know what do you think ?

 

So if you did have enough money to replace everything what would you use now, what are the pros and cons, what’s the consensus ?

 

Terminals Pros

Easier to manage

Cheaper to run / electric

Less heat output

Longer lasting/lifespan

 

Computer Pros

Faster

All eggs not in one basket

 

___________________________

 

wired

More stable

Faster

 

wireless

More freedom of movement

Cheaper

 

 

 

 

 

 

stef.

Edited July 7, 2015 by sjpage10

[comrade]

Wired, wireless is not ready yet.

 

It works but its not as good as wired, in terms of reliability.

 

On a personal lever I have concerns over its safety but that would not have any judgement on deciding.

Edited July 7, 2015 by comrade

[localzuk]

Define what you mean by "terminals"? Do you mean remote desktop thin clients, or full VDI?

 

It all depends on your use cases in your individual organisation.

 

Here, we get along nicely with a mix of full-fat wired desktop PCs, and remote desktop thin clients. We also have in place half a dozen wireless thin clients and they work fine also.

 

Your pros and cons also really depend on your individual setup.

 

Here, we've now got the management of full PCs to be pretty much as easy as thin clients. Deploying a piece of software is a matter of a few clicks in SCCM. Re-imaging a machine the same. I've also set up AppV for possible use with software that doesn't like being deployed but'll work via it.

 

Also, you can't really say PCs are faster than some form of thin client - as it depends on the machine. A class full of Pentium G2010 PCs is going to be significantly slower than a class full of thin client which shares a farm of dual Xeon E5-2699 v3 powered servers. If its full VDI with server side graphics cards also, then your servers are going to blaze past desktops.

 

Regarding the longevity, I'd also question this. We've ran thin clients for 7 years here. We bought HP thin clients, with a promise from HP that they'd last us 10 years (but not a warranty of 10 years). Over half were dead by year 5. Completely bricked. Not to mention, the software on them isn't maintained any more so doesn't take advantage of updates on the server side. Compare that to the Viglen all in one PCs we bought at the same time. We have had 3 completely die since then. Half a dozen more have died and needed new bits (hard disk here, motherboard there). They're still Core 2 Duos, so run things fine too, if a little sluggish. I'm planning to slap a few SSDs in them soon and they'll keep on ticking for a while longer. I expect the HP all in ones we bought 3 1/2 years ago to last easily as long. They've not skipped a beat in their lives so far.

 

With the wired vs wireless argument - I'd never put all clients on wireless, that's just asking for trouble. However, in general, wireless is not as bad as it used to be. A Ruckus 802.11ac network will easily handle a huge volume of devices if provisioned correctly - but it won't be cheap. You still have to have the infrastructure in place to support it. So, I would question the "cheaper" pro for wireless also.

[mthomas08]

I much prefer a standard PC, I don't like all my eggs in the same basket. It's like having no backup but a very reliable system, even the most reliable one can still fail.

 

We have not had much Network downtime in almost 3 Years but when we had, people can still use word etc. It's like this whole cloud based idea, great on paper but in reality it's miles behind.

 

Our current bandwidth wouldn't be able to keep up not with the average Year 10/11 Student drives let alone Staff. Also we have had internet outages and a power issue in the local area which either cuts us off entirely or cuts our internet.

 

Many things work on paper but don't always pan out. Likewise for Wireless, you are relying on something that isn't a constant (weather/signals can affect it). I have pushed for more and more GB networking which people have seen the huge difference. When compared to Wireless and although we are in the process of a wireless upgrade it's still miles behind a piece of copper. Let's face it, it's like relying on 3g instead of a good Wi-Fi connection - no brainer.

 

For thin clients you are relying more on the network + servers. I don't know.. I guess like always it will be School specific, if you have the backbone for Thin clients and don't rely on IT as much as we do you can get away with Wireless/Cloud etc etc. With our current dependency on IT, it's just not realistic for us. Just as much as looking to Macs instead of PCs just simply because of the cost difference and only 30 machines on the entire network need to be powerful for Art/Movie making. Budgets are being squeezed here which is even harder..

 

At the end of the day you have to plan ahead, think about the whole picture and does it suit your School.

[sjpage10]

Thanks for the replies guys

no definitive answer yet then, as I thought! it was easy 5 , 10 years ago but now

[DCUK6]

Weve kinda gone for both together.

 

When i first arrived everywhere wasw thin client and it ran like .

That was because they had 50-60 people logged in at the same time to a single server. It ran maxxed out and i had to regulary block games just because it overloaded the poor thing.

 

Now we have clients which as localz with MSI rollouts with GPO or SCCM its easy to install applications. Having each computer able to do its own computing made so much of a difference. The downside is it relies on the network to transfer files as the user works on them but its very rare they they are working on anything larger than a few mb.

 

Would never go back to full thin clients again.

 

ONe thing i still use is Remote App however. Use this for a couple of programs like SIMS where our LEA wont give us access to solu 3 so its a manual install. This is as far as i would go these days though.

 

 

 

Laptops are ok but then we only have about 10 per wireless point so run fine. Not as quick as desktops connected with a wire but usable. All of our admin machines and teacher machine where possible are desktops and physically plugged in as it does give a better service.

[sjpage10]

from what I'm reading unless your just browsing the net and maybe a little word processing thin client is a no no

 

would be no good for ICT where we use programs such as Audacity, Serif, Movie maker etc

no good for Art where we use Photoshop

no good for CDT where we use autocad

and no god for Music where we use Sibelius

 

I'm not sure how well Sims would work never mind discover so no good for Admin

 

think we could maybe have them in the library !

 

correct me if I'm wrong ?

 

not only that but am I correct in believing that if someone infects the image say by browsing a inappropriate web site , so as you end up with a few inappropriate toolbars installed every client that logs on will be as the infected one !

 

and as our little darlings are always trying to break our systems that would mean one kid could bring down every terminal and then all clients would have to be off whilst the image was restored

Edited July 14, 2015 by sjpage10

[DCUK6]

That's pretty much what we found.

Unless you have a beast of a server it's not good. You can get servers with graphics capabilities in them, without it things like movie maker wouldn't even load on ours.

 

SIMS works well on it though, we don't show them the full desktop but use remote app..

 

There's good and bad points to it which is why I like our combo.. Best of both.

[sjpage10]

can you guys give me some pros and cons for thin / fat client please

 

I though of another negative , we use index.dat to trace individual users activates when asked to, guessing this wouldn't work with thin client

also in the event of a server failure users can store their work on their local desktop and again not sure this would work on thin client

[CyberNerd]

 

I though of another negative , we use index.dat to trace individual users activates when asked to, guessing this wouldn't work with thin client

also in the event of a server failure users can store their work on their local desktop and again not sure this would work on thin client

 

You could reverse that argument and say that if the thin client crashes the work is still saved. what is more likely to fail - desktop or server. I'd put money on it being a desktop. You can loose an entire room of thin clients and the work is still there.

 

I run a pretty big thin client system and have done for many years. I've also seen other schools try it and fail.

The failed ones usually comes down to the fact that it is harder to implement properly. Almost all of the problems listed here can be overcome. excluding heavy video editing usage which you will still need a fat client for. General rule is that if you don't know how to do it then stick to fat clients and invest your time there, or get some professional help. It's the little things like thinking one big powerful server is going to be better than a lot of diskless servers - it isn't!! Take a leaf from the Google/Facebooks and run many less powerful (and diskless ) servers. Network boot them too and have them run out of RAM so that you get no I/O bottlenecks.

 

If you do decide then you have the advantage of: Apps that run in a browser over HTML5, much lower hardware costs (chromebooks for example), anywhere anytime learning, very simple administration.