R
Rob Nicholson
We're running Windows 2003 Server with terminal services and Citrix
Presentation Server 3, although about to upgrade to 4.5. It's becoming
increasingly difficult to defend our existing thin client devices (Wyse
S10s) for a variety of reasons.
I'm very tempted to stop our purchase of Wyse terminals, at least the S10s
because:
a) Lack of USB pen drive support
b) poor graphic performance
c) inability to play some media format files
d) much higher power PCs for a very similar price
e) looking to the future and how virtualisation/SBE may change
At the moment, users have to logon to a PC in the office to transfer files.
This is an annoyance and as we all know, some annoyances become very
annoying.
Poor graphic performance and inability to play some media files is becoming
a problem for us. Windows PCs play video better than the Wyse terminals both
in terms of speed and the variety of codecs available. As far as I
understand it with Citrix, when a movie is played, the rectangle video
window is actually streamed directly down to the client and played there.
The video isn't decompressed, rendered into the video buffer on the terminal
server, recompressed using RDP or ICA, sent down the wire and then
decompressed again. In theory, streaming the video window directly to the
client is the same speed as if it was being played locally on a PC. I can't
see thin client devices being able to match this, certainly not keeping up
to date with codecs.
I suspect that if we could solve USB pen drive support by going up to a
higher spec thin client device, the hardware price differential between thin
client and relatively high spec PCs becomes very narrow, if not
non-existent. Here in the UK, Dell have just announced the Vostro range
which has the following spec:
o Celeron 420 1.6GHz
o Vista Business
o 1 year warranty
o 19" flat panel monitor (this says introductory offer)
o 1GB RAM
o 250GB SATA hard disk
o Intel x3100 graphics card
o CD-RW/DVD
o Keyboard and mouse
Okay so a Celeron 420 1.6GHz isn't going to set the world alight and we'd
throw that always Vista away but this costs £199 ex. VAT in the UK. That's
cheaper than the Wyse S10 and a *lot* more powerful.
I accept that the set-up time for a thin client is much less than a PC
although you can speed up roll out of locked down PCs running the RDP/ICA
client with imaging. The energy argument never really seems to work either -
"sorry, no you can't copy to a pen drive but that device does save us 32p a
week in power". You can imagine the usual response.
But the one thing that's worrying me most is the changes in the
virtualisation/SBC market. I get the feeling that in 1-2 years time, we
won't be running Citrix anymore as our pure desktop environment and we'll
have moved onto something else, a hybrid maybe. But those Wyse thin clients
won't help us there.
Maybe we've just outgrowing SBC...
Cheers, Rob.
Presentation Server 3, although about to upgrade to 4.5. It's becoming
increasingly difficult to defend our existing thin client devices (Wyse
S10s) for a variety of reasons.
I'm very tempted to stop our purchase of Wyse terminals, at least the S10s
because:
a) Lack of USB pen drive support
b) poor graphic performance
c) inability to play some media format files
d) much higher power PCs for a very similar price
e) looking to the future and how virtualisation/SBE may change
At the moment, users have to logon to a PC in the office to transfer files.
This is an annoyance and as we all know, some annoyances become very
annoying.
Poor graphic performance and inability to play some media files is becoming
a problem for us. Windows PCs play video better than the Wyse terminals both
in terms of speed and the variety of codecs available. As far as I
understand it with Citrix, when a movie is played, the rectangle video
window is actually streamed directly down to the client and played there.
The video isn't decompressed, rendered into the video buffer on the terminal
server, recompressed using RDP or ICA, sent down the wire and then
decompressed again. In theory, streaming the video window directly to the
client is the same speed as if it was being played locally on a PC. I can't
see thin client devices being able to match this, certainly not keeping up
to date with codecs.
I suspect that if we could solve USB pen drive support by going up to a
higher spec thin client device, the hardware price differential between thin
client and relatively high spec PCs becomes very narrow, if not
non-existent. Here in the UK, Dell have just announced the Vostro range
which has the following spec:
o Celeron 420 1.6GHz
o Vista Business
o 1 year warranty
o 19" flat panel monitor (this says introductory offer)
o 1GB RAM
o 250GB SATA hard disk
o Intel x3100 graphics card
o CD-RW/DVD
o Keyboard and mouse
Okay so a Celeron 420 1.6GHz isn't going to set the world alight and we'd
throw that always Vista away but this costs £199 ex. VAT in the UK. That's
cheaper than the Wyse S10 and a *lot* more powerful.
I accept that the set-up time for a thin client is much less than a PC
although you can speed up roll out of locked down PCs running the RDP/ICA
client with imaging. The energy argument never really seems to work either -
"sorry, no you can't copy to a pen drive but that device does save us 32p a
week in power". You can imagine the usual response.
But the one thing that's worrying me most is the changes in the
virtualisation/SBC market. I get the feeling that in 1-2 years time, we
won't be running Citrix anymore as our pure desktop environment and we'll
have moved onto something else, a hybrid maybe. But those Wyse thin clients
won't help us there.
Maybe we've just outgrowing SBC...
Cheers, Rob.