Multipoint Server update -- thin client mm perfomance??

[milt]

A year ago, I spent some time here reporting on my 24 seat WMS 2010 installation with direct video/usb hub connections (4 seats/i5 760). Short story is everything has gone well with office, internet, flash/shockwave apps, and solidworks.

 

Now, I am building a 50 seat system in our large community room which has longer distances between seats. I was so impressed with the 4 seat/server performance that I am testing 12 seats/server which strains the direct video solution, so I've been looking at thin clients, DisplayLink, and nComputing solutions.

 

Thus far, thin clients are OK but have unacceptable, jerky video (youtube). DisplayLink works great (I'm using Plugable stations) and I have up to 8 stations per server so far. I have an L300 from nComputing but haven't tested it yet. I haven't loaded up the 8 station system yet, so I don't know its useful capacity but I will be doing that soon.

 

The thin clients I have tested are $50 WinCE 6.0 units from China and HP t5325 (which I can get for $100). Both of these are about the same performance though the HP is a little easier to manage. So one question is -- is there a thin client in this price range that can give better video performance? Another question is -- can Quest EOP make a difference?

 

Why would I care if the Plugable DisplayLink devices work so well? Mostly so I can have clients on ethernet, without distance restrictions of USB.

 

Why don't I use various other server/client solutions? Because I'm not a networking genius like most edugeeks and I don't want to spend much time managing the system. WMS is simple enough for me to manage.

 

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

All the best,

Milt

[kmount]

The L300 is rather impressive on Multipoint Server / RDS, I think you'll be quite surprised.

 

Cheers,

 

Kim

[SYNACK]

You may also have the option of using usb connected zeroclients with 'active' usb extention cables, you may run into video issues because of USBs latency though. I am hopefully reciving a test unit from a supplier to try at the end of a 5m active extention so assuming it shows up I'll post my experiences somewhere on the forums.

[Axel]

We posted a video covering multi-media on thin clients a while back, please see the link below....

 

If you want to have an evaluation terminal please contact [email protected] in our US office (FLA)

 

YouTube Multi-Media on RDP Thin client

 

This shows a "vanilla" RDP connection on W2008 on an Axel M80 Zero Client with BBC Iplayer and Youtube... As there is no operating system

between the RDP client and the zero client harware performance is surprisingly good...

Edited June 5, 2011 by Axel