Old PC's as Thin Clients

[robert.mabbutt]

We have some old PC's, Cel 400mhz 64mb ram, 6 gig hard disk. The cost of disposing these under WEE is bloody expensive! so I'm trying to think of some low/free cost ways of disposing.

 

Firstly, would these PC's be useful for a Thin Client setup?

 

Secondly, would anyone be interested in these (approx 50 units) tbh I don't think we need any money for them, just someone to collect them lol.

 

Regards

Robert

[adent]

IMHO Using old PC's as thin clients is not worth it. You still have to spend the time maintaining them. Better to spend it on more general preventative maintenance than to try to eek out using old kit. I'll dig out the contact details I had for a free disposal service tomorrow.

 

If you have a thin client solution in place already, then fair enough, but overall I've not come across one that is totally successful yet.

 

Now if that isn't an invitation to be proved wrong I don't know what is......

[Ric_]

Check out http://www.thinstation.org for an easy way to turn them into thin clients. If you don't have a thin client solution in place, your initial costs will be high.

[openhgs]

Your old PCs are perfect for an LTSP setup. You can extend the life of PCs until the hardware physically fails - that is an upgrade is not forced upon you by the company that writes the operating system that you use. I've used 10 year old PCs as thin clients and they work spendidly. You could buy a decent server and get a 50 seat lab for the hardware cost of the server; this makes the per seat cost very low.

[robert.mabbutt]

Thanks for the links guys, I'm currently checking them out!

 

adent, the free disposal service could be of use! do you know if they take old printers? lol

 

Robert

[adent]

Check out http://www.thinstation.org for an easy way to turn them into thin clients. If you don't have a thin client solution in place, your initial costs will be high.

 

Hmmm - very interesting. Thanks Ric_. Looks like I will have to revise my opinion.

[LCWS]

Blatent spam removed! - Ric_

[localzuk]

Woo! We seem to have gained another spammer... Sigh

[OutLawTorn]

We have used old PCs as TS clients in a couple of different ways, with varying success.

 

The first method we used was Windows 98 running a pre-configured mstsc.exe instead of explorer.exe. This method was reliable, and easy to set up as the ghost image was only ~150mb. Downsides included bad USB drive support (as windows 98 driver support is, well, old) and its a bit of a pain to change the mstsc settings (gotta boot in cmd prompt, change the system.ini, then reboot, make changes, change system.ini back then reboot again).

 

The second option we tried was 2x Thinclient Server which has a freely downloadable version. It involves running their server application. Their application ties in with AD and runs a sql database that keeps track of the users, clients and settings, with apache/tftp for the interface and PXE booting. The clients can then boot off PXE, CD, USB drive or the hard drive. For local installs, the client can be updated remotely. The clients are linux based, and has better driver support. It takes up approx ~35mb on the workstations if a local install is done. The main downsides we have found with the system is that it uses a fair amout of resources on the PC hosting the software, and if the database dies, the clients can get a bit twitchy.