Rack Mount Solution for Desktop PCs

kilroy666 writes "ComputerWorld has an executive technology brief on a company called ClearCUBE. This company created a system to rack mount the guts of a PC and allow the monitor/keyboard to be up to 200m away. With add-ons and network storage, the PC's are swappable in case of a failure." Having spent several years as a tech fixing PCs, I have to say that this concept seems like it could be really awesome. Of course, I say awesome for every except me. I want my PC on my desk dammit.

Comments

How to use it?

[HerrGlock]

If I'm sitting at my computer, it doesn't work too well if the monitor and keyboard are 200' away. Have to get up everytime a compile fails and walk over there?

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Re:How to use it?

[Bob McCown]

If youre sitting at your computer, and the keyboard and monitor are 200 feet away, what are you doing, admiring your nice beige case?

Re:How to use it?

[HerrGlock]

My point exactly.

DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page

Re:How to use it?

[shyster]

What? I think you should be sitting at the monitor and keyboard, the PC goes in a rack in another room. The monitor and keyboard are connected by cabling. All files and such are saved on a network server. If you're computer has a problem, the tech in the computer room unplugs your PC and plugs in a new one. All set to go.

Re:How to use it?

[riotrick]

>Look, this is all a waste of time. We should be >out developing our direct cyborg linkup, its >about time we had a collective. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile!

Re:How to use it?

[Yeuh Nicks]

Christ man...if you need to reset your PC that much, don't spend your time walking, spend it shopping for a new OS. Y

Colo Heaven

[ahknight]

This sounds like heaven for a colo area. Hook all colo computers up to this and have a massive KVM switch collection for each rack/row/section and customers can just go to a special room instead of potentially having a chance to get at someone else's machine. Ends the days of rolling a mobile monitor/keyboard around as well.

Nice.

Re:Colo Heaven

[yardgnome]

Oh, how I wish this would work for colo. However, a check of their website seems to show that they don't provide a way to rackmount your own machine....it's just that they've got these funky cards (they call them CPU Blades) that contain most of a computer's guts, so they're rackmountable. Then you can stuff a bunch of them together and not have to worry about the users installing tons of software on your nice clean ghost, or trying to ram a floppy disk into a Zip drive.

Since colo customers have their own boxes (that's sort of the definition of colo), they're not going to be able to take advantage of this setup.

ALTHOUGH, this could mean the beginning of a new colo-model. Instead of paying money to have their own box sit on top of the uplink, colo customers could pay money to RENT one of these rackmounted boxes that sits on top of the uplink. If someone could figure out a way to make each machine in this rack secure from other colo customers, it would be a very portable colo, indeed! Instead of requiring a largish room for 30 boxes, you'd only need 1 rack. And instead of the dreaded monitor/keyboard cart, you could use a KVM!

---

Re:Colo Heaven

[drsoran]

Well, this is certainly nothing new. They make matrix KVM switches that do that just fine today. If your colocation facility doesn't have some kind of KVM switch and requires you to "roll a mobile monitor/keyboard around" I'd look elsewhere. :-)

Video signal quality?

[drenehtsral]

I wonder how they keep the video signal from degrading over that distance... 200m is quite a ways. I guess if Ethernet can do it, they might be able to pull it off, but in my experience even adding 6 feet to a monitor cable adds blur...

Re:Video signal quality?

[remande]

The cage is its own architecture, and the c/port is a little black box. There's a CAT5 cable, suitable for 100MBPS ethernet, between the two.

They probably use a proprietary ethernet-based protocol, and use the c/port (and a similar unit in the cage) to modulate between proprietary and SVGA.

Re:Video signal quality?

[green pizza]

It uses lossless compression and a differential digital signal. Read the whitepapers on any of the long-distance KVM gizmos. Interesting stuff.

Re:Video signal quality?

[John Miles]

A high-resolution video signal takes several hundred MHz of bandwidth (think of the clock rate of your video DAC times 3 channels). It's not impossible, given high-quality coax and interconnects, but it's not gonna be cheap either.

You could theoretically build a wireless link for monitors, but to keep the FCC off your back in the US, you'd probably need to use a carrier frequency somewhere north of 10 GHz. Not exactly commodity stuff, and not good at all for passing through walls.

Re:Video signal quality?

[quarky2]

I had the same problem when I used monitor cable extenders and unshielded cables. When I bought a 10 ft heavily shield cable from http://www.cablestogo.com the ghosting problem went away. Granted that's not close to 200m, but it was just right for my desktop.

Re:Video signal quality?

[Dg93]

Oh, hrm, you mean like, say, the Sun Ray?

Re:Video signal quality?

[stfrn]

this sin't exactly what you are talking about, but just the word cable maid me think of using a normal tv cable, and using a tv instead of a monitor. granted this would take a tv out on the computer, and you would't have a real termainl, but who does anyway? just a suggestion.

Re:Video signal quality?

[Sylver Dragon]

It is possible to send a video signal this far, but it isn't cheap. A customer of the company I work for was interested in sending a video signal (not to mention keyboard and mouse input) something like 200-300 meters. They accomplished it by using a Versitile Communications Module(VCM) to connect the monitor to a fiber optic cable. Then it was just a matter of running the fiber to the user station and using another VCM to convert back to a normal VGA cable. Worked ok from what I understand. I imagine that this idea could be used to overcome the problem with long distance VGA display.

Re:Video signal quality?

[wiedmeister]

Actually the video comes through fairly clearly as long as the punchdowns are done correctly (and you are using decent quality CAT-5 cabling)

I'd really like just the connection

[JanneM]

What I'd really would like is to have their special commbox for my otherwise ordinary PC. Something along the lines of one box by the computer where all the video, keyboard, mouse, sound and the like is plugged in, a cable, and another box at my desk where all connectors are available locally. That way I could put the computer in a closet somewhere and not have to listen to that incessant humming every single day...

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[bcboy]

Amen to that. computer hum drives me nuts. I've put my machines in a closet, but they're pretty loud even through the sliding door (mostly because of wood floors, I think). Anyone know a good sound-proofing material that's cheaper that egg-crate foam?

I'd been thinking about trying to do a very long cable run to the garage, with video and usb, which could potentially be all the cable I'd need. With usb serial, parallel, keyboard, mouse, mic, and maybe cd burner. Only trouble is the abysmal selection of usb drivers for linux. I'd have to buy win 98 and spend a few months reverse engineering usb drivers. Maybe if I get downsized by the new new economy I'll have time to do this... ;)

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[tuffy]

Easy enough. Buy an X terminal to display all your X11 apps from the Big Noisy Box. Then you can just move Big Noisy Box anywhere you like with a bit of ethernet strung between the two.

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[silicon_synapse]

"Amen to that. computer hum drives me nuts. I've put my machines in a closet, but they're pretty loud even through the sliding door (mostly because of wood floors, I think). Anyone know a good sound-proofing material that's cheaper that egg-crate foam?"

One effectives solution is the Sledge Hammer®. After an initial increase in noise output for anywhere from a few seconds to an hour, niose levels are reduced to near nothing. The effects generally last the life of the computer. Sledge Hammer® is compatible with most architectures.


--

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[mmontour]

What I'd really would like is to have their special commbox for my otherwise ordinary PC. Something along the lines of one box by the computer where all the video, keyboard, mouse, sound and the like is plugged in, a cable, and another box at my desk where all connectors are available locally.

Check out the Cybex "Longview" - it carries KVM, audio, and a serial port up to 500 feet on standard Cat5/RJ45 cable (but it's analog, not ethernet). Combine it with some of their rack-mounted KVM switches, and you can run a whole server room remotely.

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[PopeAlien]

I use Belkin KVM Switches at home and at work. I'd love to have other connectors availiable as well in one box (audio, Firewire, USB, etc), but for now Its nice just having access to four boxes from one workstation setup.

Re:I'd really like just the connection

[Eric Gibson]

Me too, that connection would be awesome for my studio. I could put them in a closet across the house... This in combination with a kvm type switching mechanism for multiple computers with one monitor/mouse/keyboard would be ideal...

How is this different from thin clients?

[Mr.Phil]

I'm not really sure how this is different from thin clients except for the seperate "CPU Blade" for each desktop.

Wouldn't a terminal server with thin clients do the same thing? I'd much rather have a room of thins and the student/worker/whatever walk in, swipe a card in a card reader and have the desktop they left eariler just as is was.

Re:How is this different from thin clients?

[sparkz]

The SunRay does this; Sun themselves use them internally, and it's pretty good; start writing a document, visit another office, you can just borrow a SunRay (there tend to be a few public areas with SunRays lying around), swipe in and continue editing the document you were working on before. Exactly where you left off.

The drawback to this, is that a server which serves 200 people may only have 100 people logged in at a time; with this system, the sessions are kept active all the time on the server, meaning: get out a purchase order for a nice big new Sun server!

#include <stddiscl.h>

Re:How is this different from thin clients?

[Lxy]

Thin client is probably a better solution. In a smaller organization this would probably be easier and cheaper to go this route, but when you start looking at 1,000+ PCs it makes no sense. In an array of 1,000 PCs, you know there's a LOT of CPU time going unused. If you clustered those 1,000 boxen together, you'd be able to (on average) support around 2,000 users with all the extra CPU. This is assuming you have a mix of engineers, secretaries, PHBs, etc and not all programmers, your milage may vary. There are much nicer solutions than this IMHO.

Re:How is this different from thin clients?

[Omega996]

chown us:us *your_base

lots of hassle

[nate1138]

I think this could only work well in a call-center or other repetitive task environment. If all you are doing is running Filemaker, or some proprietary tracking software, it would be pretty cool, but for any kind of real user it sounds like a pain in the ass. Where's my CD-ROM, etc. Plus the part about making workspaces smaller irks me. Soon we will all be working in phone booths, standing up, because it saves space.

Re:lots of hassle

[silicon_synapse]

"Soon we will all be working in phone booths, standing up, because it saves space."

I doubt it. Standing up for long periods of time will increase complaints of fatigue, back ache, etc. Instead, we will be put into coffin-size boxes and stacked several high to save space. Sleep will be induced for 15 minutes every several hours so employees can remain at work 24 hours per day. Those who show signs of nonconformance will be given an extra dose of tranquilizer and their coffin^H^H^H^H^H^Hcubicle will be ejected into a mass grave^H^H^H^H^Hassisted living facility.


--

Re:lots of hassle

[nate1138]

Yeah, I guess I had hoped for a more humane space saver, but I thinkg you might be onto something.... can we patent it??

multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[ChristTrekker]

This might be applicable to my own problem. I just want to figure out how I can have multiple people logged on to my MacOS X box concurrently. Most of a processor's time is spent idle. Why should my wife and I have 2 PC's at home when 1 has all the processing power we need? If there's a way to set up the keyboard and display remote from the PC, I'm half way there...solving the lack of physical ports. And since OS X is a multi-user system, what else would I need to do?

I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[Bonker]

Why should my wife and I have 2 PC's at home when 1 has all the processing power we need?

You mean you don't want to play games at all? Oh wait, you're on Mac... forget I said anything.

Seriously, if you're going to use your OSX system for networking and development, there probably isn't any reason you should not divvy up your system as stated. The technical challenge here is that I dont think Mac Finder will do it. You'll have to figure out how to get X to run separate window managers on different monitors and have each instance talk to different keyboards and mice on the USB bus. Hard, but probably not impossible.

If you're planning on *ever* using *any* of MacOS's multimedia features, forget about it. Save yourself the headache and go buy two computers. You'll never get the multimedia performance you should if your computer is busy running two desktops.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[Strog]

This is a 1 to 1 solution. You have one computer that is attached remotely to a keyboard, monitor, etc. This lets you put all the computers in one location for maintenance, security, etc.

You are looking for an OS X terminal server probably.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[ChristTrekker]

Exactly! If anyone knows more about this, I'd really like to know. If NeXT had it, I don't know why it would have been taken out of OS X. There are probably a lot of people who, like me, don't really stress their system that hard. I'd rather pay $200 for an extra terminal than an extra $1000 for second PC when the first PC could handle the extra load just fine by itself. And the terminal could be used for quite some time while the PC gets upgraded and replaced.

I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[ChristTrekker]

You're right. I'm still working my way through the Marathon Trilogy. Someday I'll download the new scenario patches (like M:Evil) and try those, too. I just don't have the time to play games.

Isn't multi-user capability built in, though? I mean, shouldn't the OS understand input from different keyboards/mice already? I figured the hardest part would be the video.

If I ever do any multi-media stuff it's unlikely we'd be logged in a the same time. And my multi-media experience is limited to recording a bit from the mic, and using ColorIt! to make simple web page graphics. I hope Gimp gets ported to OS X.

I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[chikanamakalaka]

You can do this with Apple Network Services. I don't have a link, but you can search for it yourself with google.

Re:multiple concurrent users on MacOS X

[boskone]

Not to be curt, but my televideo system supported up to 5 terminals and that was about 18 years ago. If you don't have heavy computational needs, there should be a way for you to both pull of the same system. You could also consider running X on the Mac and then finding a slim X terminal for the second user... then you only have one box to administer and listen to.

Pretty snazzy

[andy@petdance.com]

I believe these were the guys that I saw at Comdex that had a zillion PC-on-a-card doodads. The KVM signals ran to the desk via CAT5 cabling. You just have to have a keyboard, monitor and mouse on the desktop, split apart at with an adapter.

Very cool to be able to have a rack full of PCs that you can switch from one user to another just by movin' a cable.
--

Terminal Services is better

[nehril]

This sounds like a cool concept, but Windows Terminal Services is a far more efficient solution for most cases. Setup a rack of dual processor terminal services machines and you deploy thin terminals *anywhere* you have power and network connectivity.

After you take licensing costs into account a full terminal server solution (with citrix/load-balanced servers) probably costs as much as buying lots of desktops, but you have a system that can be managed from a central data center.

Now, I could definitely use a rack system like this for my home experiments...

Re:Terminal Services is better

[Omega996]

wts/citrix sucks for anything other than simple setups - the co. i work for is moving all the lusers to thin clients (hahaha, you know, purchasing thin clients (and then e-pc's cuz the thin clients couldn't be used with a floppy or cd if necessary) instead of using the old crap computers that they had as thin clients), and there are so many issues with lack of true multi-user functionality. all kinds of problems with drive mapping, and assumptions made by software, etc. that it's all running on a machine with one user at a time.

That and so much more.

[canning]

• it keeps PCs physically accessible to IT staffers at all times
• gives IT the ability to back up user PCs
• allows IT staff to disable some components or capabilitiesmay be able to get by with a smaller workspace.
• removes the heat and fan noise of PCs
• components inside the box can't go home with a dishonest employee.

Plus I hate getting off my ass. Hey, I get paid for fixin', not for walkin'.

SunRay

[vr]

This seems very to Suns Sunray product line.

Re:SunRay

[John Paul Jones]

Actually, it's nothing like SunRay.

*sigh* If only broadcast UDP wasn't the SunRay answer.

-JPJ

Re:SunRay

[vr]

argh. that should have been "seems very _similar_ to.."

Backtracking

[JohnnyKnoxville]

In sense it seems like we are backtracking to the days of mainframes. Obviously newer, better technology, but the concept is essentially the same.

an answer to noise polution?

[RussRoss]

This would be a great way to get my noisy box out of my room. My roommate described my computer as sounding like a small airplane, and he's not too far off. Stupid noisy fans all over the place.

- Russ

Sounds useful to me.

[sulli]

Of course I use a laptop, but if I and my peers had desktops in the office there's no reason why this wouldn't work.

This is probably most useful for call centers, sales offices, and other locations where desks are small and users are non-tech savvy ... I can think of lots of people who'd just as soon not see any hardware at all, 'cause it scares them!

Re:Sounds useful to me.

[Luminous]

When discussing this amount the tech literate it seems like an anathema. But to a score of phone reps who don't use computers often enough to know what a BSOD even is, this could be a god send.

My company now has over 30 employees who only use dumb terminals. We are now exploring a complete swap out of our enterprise system which means we need to either get thin-clients or some other centralized support system. We have some issues with thin clients and Citrix is our first choice (Citrix with a bunch of used PC's), but it is obvious there is a need within certain corporate environments to keep the actual CPU away from the user, even if it is for psychological reasons.

Let's face it, I've yet to work for a company that gives $.02 towards adequate training and skills enhancement to turn a terminal user into a pc user over night.

Uhhhhh

[matth]

Is there a reason neither of the URLs in the story resolve or work?

Re:Uhhhhh

[the_tsi]

Yeah, it's called "Macromedia Flash" and for some reasons websites love to use it...

-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

Re:Uhhhhh

[beowulfshaeffer]

Ever heard of the slashdot effect?

Interesting, but ...

[rho]

The cost of computers isn't very high. It's the cost of people to fix and maintain the computers and software to run on the computers that's expensive. This doesn't save on the first, and doesn't address the second. It's a convenience, sure, but not really money-saving.

Plus, corporations depreciate their equipment on their balance sheets, so the hardware is (to a greater or lesser extent) at no cost. However, Windows and MS Office and such is VERY expensive, and you can't depreciate software (that I'm aware of).

Seems to me that ClearCube and, say, RedHat oughta be talking to each other...
"Beware by whom you are called sane."

Re:Interesting, but ...

[martinusl]

You're right about the cost of support, but wrong about hardware vs. software. Windows, Office et.c are negligible costs in a corporate environment compared with hardware & networking. This is an old idea, I wish I could remember the number of times I've seen it before. I think the main reason it never caught on much in corporate environment is that users want to upgrade PCs out of their own budget. Also, your rack system will go out of date & then you will want to replace it all at once. With desktops you go through a rolling replacement program so at least someone is up to date & you don't spend all that money in one year. The video cable technology is hardly new. Right now I've got SKM on my desk that connects to any one of 26 servers thru some sort of console splitter box. Who wants a separate screen for every server? Who's got the space?

Re:Interesting, but ...

[Patrick Lewis]

Plus, corporations depreciate their equipment on their balance sheets, so the hardware is (to a greater or lesser extent) at no cost. However, Windows and MS Office and such is VERY expensive, and you can't depreciate software (that I'm aware of).

I think you are a little fuzzy on the accounting details. Depreciation isn't magic; it just means you can realize the expense over several years. So yes, you are right that you can depreciate hardware and not software. But, you expense software, or "depreciate it immediately". Both of these items (the software and hardware) reduce your net income. The only issue is when the reduction (expense) occurs.

I could get long and boring about this (too late?), but trust me, just because something is depreciated doesn't mean it is "at no cost."

Re:Interesting, but ...

[BrK]

It all depends at what you are trying to do with your computers, and what form of measurement you use to arrive at the "cost".

By putting all the computers in a central environment, you can save on cost in a number of ways. One, is that the techs can stay more centralized, rather than roaming around a largish building, chasing problems. Also, by keeping the desktops in an environment that is (hopefully) climate controlled with conditioned power, you prolong the life of the unit, and increase its overall reliability and uptime. You could also have "hot spares" in the rack and quickly switch a user to another unit in the event of a failure, and then diagnose/replace the failed unit at your leisure.

Even though hardware can be depreciated, it is not free as in software or beer. Real money is used to pay for hardware and for support costs.

There is also something to be said for the fact that the weekend PC Jockey in Accounting can't try and "upgrade" his system for you, or load some rogue software into it easily.

It's all about VFM (or Bang per Buck)

[Hater's Leaving, The]

This grabbed my attention as I am a compulsive number-cruncher and I need CPUs by the bucketload, but only need one 'KVM'.
There is certainly more of a market for this kind of system nowadays. These guys aren't alone. After being bombarded with adverts proclaiming the glory of the rack-mount, I was persuaded to look at Penguin Computing only yesterday. To my dismay it is cheaper to buy a whole 1.2GHz Athlon system (including everything) than a 1GHz rack mount from Penguin.
The problem is perceived 'quality'. These rack mount systems are for professional commercial deployment. They aren't crash-a-day big-red-button machines. So in principle you end up in the 'IBM/Compaq' league of prices.
Billy number-cruncher doesn't buy IBM/Compaq PCs due to the price, so he sure ain't going to buy rack units at the same premium.
But not much of the world is Billy number-cruncher, so it probably don't matter too much to them.
THL.
--

Re:It's all about VFM (or Bang per Buck)

[GunFodder]

Wouldn't it be cool if affordable PC hardware came in a variety of form factors other than ATX? I think that there currently is a market for DIY rack mounts and DIY set-top boxes. Unfortunately it is hard to find MBs and expansion cards that are small enough.

Re:It's all about VFM (or Bang per Buck)

[Hater's Leaving, The]

The small ATX footprints are OK, given that the limiting factor is probably the stuff we stick into them. (CPUs are big, external busses are long, and RAM is wide).

This place seems to to have had the same idea as Siamese systems (titsup?) in sticking lots of stuff in one box:
Rendercube

However, look at the prices... Cheap, but certainly beatable.

THL.
--

I can see this.

[Alien54]

After all, in a rack mount set up, well it doesn't have to be 200 m away. It could be in a rack on the wall with all of the rest of your electronics gear. Audio, video, etc.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Re:I can see this.

[kylepike]

What I really want is a case for an ATX MB that is audio-component size. I have TV out, I have a Wireless K/M, all I need is a case that isn't puke beige or as deep (and proprietary) as a Network Engines/Penguin Comp. "pizza box" 1RU server. Know of one? Reply with the link. My minitower looks _weak_ in my entertainment center and right now I'm leaning towards an old Indigo painted black..

Re:I can see this.

[Alien54]

While I do not have anything that is audio component style, the guys at techstyle have some very interesting cases in wood

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

fun with centralized PC's

[banky]

Boss: Hey, Dave just called, his PC is dead. Can you pop in a replacement?
Me: Sure, no problem. What's his machine?
Boss: uh, rack 2, #5. I think.
(walk over, yank out that Blade card)
Someone: AAGGHH!
Me: what you say?
Boss: OOps, rack 5, number 2. That was the President's machine.

Re:fun with centralized PC's

[BrK]

Yes, like many technologies, these may not be well suited for corporations that can't get their basic infrastructure and labeling scheme under control.

Can't stop me

[Uninvited Guest]

Look, it doesn't matter how far you put the computer away from me. I'm still going to do things to it that I'm not supposed to do. I just want to be clear on this.

Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.

Definately cool!

[jmccay]

They even list Linux as an operating system. It has a scaleable hard drive, but the downside is the standard is only 10 GIG.
This would be great for a geek household It wouldn't be hard to setup a cool computer room. It is easy to add new computers to the network, and easy to swap computers! I definately want some!

Re:Definately cool!

[The_Messenger]

They even list Linux as an operating system.

Wow, cool. This is an imporant first step for Linux: being finally recognized by someone -- anyone -- as a viable OS. Now don't get your hopes up... they didn't recognize it as a particularly good or useful system, but Linux has to start small if it ever wants to attain the level of mediocrity acheived by such successful open-source operating systems as NetBSD and Minix. Perhaps -- yes, perhaps! -- one day Linux will even be used by people who know what they're doing. But until that day, you must remain grateful for such small praise as this.

Amen.

--

Cute, but what about digital video?

[WinPimp2K]

Sure it will help save spave to get the boxes off the desktop/out of the cubicles, but that is also the reason for replacing CRTs with LCD monitors. But LCD monitors don't use analog video signals. I predict some PHBs are about to enjoy one of those expensive learning experiences that get them the big raises :-)

Re:Cute, but what about digital video?

[BrK]

LCD monitors use the same connection that tube monitors use.

The LCD itself requires different driver circuitry, but that is inside the monitor.

I predict that you will soon do more research before you post...

Re:Cute, but what about digital video?

[tuffy]

Woah there. Some LCD monitors use standard analog VGA inputs, but not all. Please research this particular article for a listing of the more popular ones. There really is a difference.

Re:Cute, but what about digital video?

[BrK]

Yes, there are a few LCD monitors that support an all-digital interface, and the number of these monitors is likely to increase over time. This will drive down the cost of analog-interface LCD's, which is likely to make even more of them show up in the corporate world, where the product this article describes is focused. The majority of LCD monitors available today are using an analog interface. To imply, as the original poster did, that this product isn't compatible with LCD monitors is silly and incorrect.

For bleeding edge or high-performance use this isn't the best solution. For a corporation full of Joe Beancounter's it's very viable.

Re:Cute, but what about digital video?

[WinPimp2K]

Oops, I should have made it clear I was referring to the future direction of LCD / OLED monitors that will be using digital signals (undoubtably an encrypted signal to enforce all manner of copy restrictions masquerading as copyright protection)
I consider analog video signals to be a tried and tested technology. And that its present position is roghly analogous to the 5.25" 1.2Meg floppy in 1987. - massive market penetration, but about to become massively obsolete.
I also predicted it would be PHBs who were about to have "learning experiences". Buy the "blades" now, then replace the CRTs with LCDs next year and find that analog LCDs are a marginalized niche (with the appropriate price premium).

Re:Cute, but what about digital video?

[markmoss]

Some LCD's take an analog input (VGA connector), and some use a digital input. The analog input is good for compatibility, but actually the LCD cells require digital signals, so the video card is doing a D/A conversion, then the LCD circuits digitize that -- you might lose some picture sharpness in the double conversion. It's easier to drive digital signals through 200 feet of cable, so most probably they are using a special video interface with digital outputs.

Reduced noise levels

[tcyun]

One of the added benefits is that the noise level of an office/cube is reduced substantially. I know I have started to find that the several machines in my office and the related noise from fans are starting to get fairly bothersome. Oddly, it is my laptop fan that is the noisiest.

I know that IBM is working on an ultra-quiet drive for laptops, so I am not the only person who is starting to find that noise is an issue. Do any of you have noise issues?

Re:Reduced noise levels

[clare-ents]

www.quietpc.co.uk

Spend some money and get a silent machine.

Re:Reduced noise levels

[direwolf puppy]

I don't know about you, but the PC is already the quietest thing in this office. If you can get me some quiet cow-irkers, though ...

The Downside

[TwP]

is that every time a Win2k machine hangs up, the admin will have to walk into the server room and do a hard reboot on the machine. Now, if you have 96 of these in a rack you will need a full time intern whose sole job is to reboot machines for users.

-----------------

Re:The Downside

[aengblom]

If they can send a keyboard, mouse, audio, and visual signal I'd bet they can send an on, off button.

Re:The Downside

[Steeltoe]

How bout CD-ROM and floppydisc while we're at it?

- Steeltoe

Re:The Downside

[T-Ranger]

CDs are for either music or installing software. Employees should not be listening to music, and not installing software.

Floppys suck, and shouldt be used. Period. And especialy not by employees to install software.

Re:The Downside

[sydb]

If employees aren't given unnecesdary priveleges on their machines, then you don't need to worry about hiding the cd-rom drives and floppies.

Some employees might need cd-rom drives for multimedia, CBT, etc. Many more employees need floppies to carry their work home.

Re:The Downside

[Wesley Felter]

That's why there's a USB model.

Re:The Downside

[Omega996]

yeah, at my company, the lying, illiterate mouth-breathing wastes of air are promoted to management, particularly in IS.

What a great solution, like public transportation

[dasmegabyte]

Perfect for the lazy IT folks, except none of them will use it. And why should they? They need their boxes to do anything they need them too, and they shouldn't have to jump through the same hoops as the rest of us shmoes who just want to install Napster and Warez at work...

Bullshit. Nobody needs this. The reason you have a desktop rather than a thin client is that you need the ability to improvise in the course of your day. We have finance folks that use SQL scripts to generate usage reports, developers who use MS Word and Excel quite a bit, and management folks who use a wide array of tools, each in their own distinct manner. Corporate IT was shocked to discover that people had not only installed software on their machines that they (IT) hadn't anticipated them needing, but that they had done so flawlessly and used the software in the course of their day -- software like multiple browsers, spam silencers, adbusters and scripts. These are NORMAL people, mind you, not technuts -- secretaries and production folks who wouldn't know a hard disk from a hard disk-shaped rock -- who had tricked out both their hardware and their software to make their days run smoother and their user interface more intuitive.

Of course, occasionally one of them screws up -- we're all human -- and something goes wrong. Next comes the IT lecture, as they shlep themselves the three hundred feet from their technology arena to the floor of the poor saps forced to live under their auspice. With screwdriver in hand they poke about trying to fix the problem, blaming the user the whole time, and justifying solutions like thin clients and so forth by saying these interface enhancements only "create more work." More bullshit -- it's obvious they save a lot of work by using the PC's ability to multitask to make up for a lack of human space. We don't have the manpower we need, so we're all a little bit tech support, a little bit developer, a little bit graphic designer. A thin client in most offices where people actively USE computers is like cutting hands off at the wrist, and making people rely more heavily on the most unreliable element of any company -- other employees. All for the sake of making the job of the IT folks a bit easier. Call me jaded, but I've worked for IT departments and seen firsthand the type of laziness the industry enjoys. We had a director at my last job who knew he had a bank of machines that were prone to overheating and bluescreens, and yet he did nothing to fix it because he wanted Dell to admit they sold us lemons and give us better boxes. A quick jab at the OS showed the simply running CPUIdle on these boxes stopped the problems, but that solution died in its infancy. IT folks, who didn't want to increase the size of the GHOST image by even 300k to save the heartache of machines that were known to die in the middle of peoples' work, axed it. Screw the rackmount idea...screw networked computing. Give everybody their own box, let them do what they will, and when they break it, do your job and fix the fricking thing. My plumber doesn't bitch when I clog pipes, and my V-dub mechanic doesn't complain about my rusty muffler.

200 yards away

[Tony Shepps]

"Hey Jim, how about a quick game of Unreal Tournament?"

"Cool, I'll just pop in the CD."

CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop clop clop clop clop clop clop clop clop click whirrrr clack whirrrr kachunk clop clop clop clop clop clop clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop Clop CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP

"OK, let's go."

"Wait a minute... aw crap."

"What is it?"

"The right CD's in my drive, but your drive has the SimCity 3000 disk in it."

"Aw crap. Well hang on."

CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP Clop Clop Clop Clop (...the rest of this message is deleted to preserve your sanity)

Re:200 yards away

[Finni]

Is UT going to work well on a system with an Intel i810 with 4 MB of video RAM?

These are really for cubedrones who don't need anything not given to them by IT. As far as IT is concerned, anyway.

Re:200 yards away

[karavak]

You don't need the CD for Unreal Tournament on Windows based systems after it's been installed once. So you would only have to walk once... for each computer but that's why you just set up a shared CD drive. It may be different on Linux systems.. haven't had a chance to play with that yet.

cheap rackmounts? cheap cabinets?

[Speare]

I would *love* to move to a rackmount system, but the cost of the rack itself has held me back.

Ideally, I'd like a half-high enclosed cabinet that's got some cooling and some space for UPSes. A house with kids is not a cleanroom, so fan filters would be nice but enclosures are a must. Clear door to monitor the blinky lights on the cablemodem and switch once in a while.

If I lived in Oakland or San Jose, I would just drop by one of the dot.bomb firesales and grab me something for pennies on the dollar, but everything I've seen is over US$800. Ouch.

is it really that good....

[thanq]

keeps PCs physically accessible to IT staffers at all times
(and normally it's not?)
gives IT the ability to back up user PCs (that's why we have networks, duh)
allows IT staff to disable some components or capabilities (once more... you can do it remotely. unless you REALLY want to prevent user from using their cd-rom or a floppy)
may be able to get by with a smaller workspace ("may be" is the key word. now let's see how long it would take for people working on a 2'x2' desk to rebel. or steal the components from inside the box before they quit)
removes the heat and fan noise of PCs (yes if you are running an overclocked p4 and have 10 fans in it and you embedded a coffee mug heater inside it)
components inside the box can't go home with a dishonest employee (yes i really want that 64MB memory chip from my machine so it wont work at all and when i call help desk they will figure out that i had to take it home)
Overall.... what IS the gain of removing the box from underneath the desk? It's not that we are still in the 70s and a computer is a size of a big closet. So, unless you are a manager that is really trying to look good by "saving money" (cutting the costs of everything possible), then this idea is a good one. At least on the paper for your boss.

but youremployees will hate your guts.

Great For One Building Companies, but....

[GreyPoopon]

OK, this solution works great for a one-building situation, but what if you're on a corporate campus? Even 200m won't cut it. Still, a definite improvement over IT professionals on walk-about....

It's done by . . .

[Kreeblah]

using standard cat5 cabling connecting the output from the server to a special input box that, apparently, you just connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into. I'm not sure how far cat5 can be strung without noticable/significant signal degredation, but it seems to me that this wouldn't be necessary.

You could do this yourself by just setting up either SSH or VNC (depending on how you manage the server; command line or GUI) on the server and connecting to it over a network. It would be cheaper (read: free), and you wouldn't have to worry about proprietary hardware breaking.

Re:It's done by . . .

[BrK]

That solution isn't really cheaper, because now you've got 2 PC's to build/maintain, and your traffic is now going over the LAN, which is shared by all users. A switched LAN would certianly help, but may not alleviate the problem entirely.

Re:It's done by . . .

[Kreeblah]

All you would have to do would be to have a seperate switched LAN with an extra NIC in each box hooked up to it. That's basically all this is, I think (I can't seem to find exact specs on it, though, so I could be wrong).

Hard Drive Clicks

[FTL]

I don't like this idea. Most serious users get a lot of subliminal information from their computer just by listening to it. If my PC stops responding, and the hard drive is clicking away, I know it's just busy scratching an itch (very technical, I know).

Back in the good old days I'd attach a wire from my parallel port to an input on the back of my radio. That way I could hear crosstalk from traffic on the main bus. Although I couldn't tell exactly what the noise meant, I could tell what the computer was up to.

I dread the day when hard drives are solid state and don't make any noise. This proposal effectively does that by moving the hard drive out of ear shot. The hard drive is the last component left that gives off useful acoustic status info.
--

Re:Hard Drive Clicks

[jandrese]

Heh, that reminds me of the days when I could hear network traffic (over the 19200 ROLM data connection). It was great actually, I could hear when a transfer stalled and when someone logged into my machine (bzzzzzt, bzt, bzt, bzt, bzt....) I could hear every keystroke transmitted over the line, and all I needed was poorly shielded cables. and crosstalk on the ISA bus. :)

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

Re:Hard Drive Clicks

[pkesel]

You "serious" PC guys who've never worked in a shared environment on real hardware are insecure by nature. That whole "PC stops responding" notion is a falacy you've been lead to believe is normal. The HP-UX boxen we've had up for 150+ days without reboot are hooked to a Tandem high avialablitiy system, backed by redundant mainframes, all connected by redundant data paths. They go down when we tell them to. Get yourself to a "serious" environment and you can give up your hard drive click security blanket.

Re:Hard Drive Clicks

[pkesel]

"In college" and "old Unix-running VAX" immediately remove this environment from any reasonable discussion. Management of resources in colleges is generally terrible, and upgrades are generally done when some huge technology endowment has been dropped in the dean's lap.

Seen it all before...

[Martin S.]

Having spent several years as a tech fixing PCs, I have to say that this concept seems like it could be really awesome. Of course, I say awesome for every except me.

Call be a cynical old fossil if you like but I seem to remember this is how WE used to do things before some 'technology executive' decided to put them on the desk instead and give use all tinitus, from the noise all those fans make.

Indeed I rather enjoyed sharing a single VDU in the only air conditioned room in the building; all trying to be the first to spot the problem;

What's that from the back ?

What People are doing that again too ? you don't say! And calling it extreme programming you say ?

Well I would never have guessed it. It seems there is nothing new, even in high technology. Well I've got an New[s] idea to share with you all. Have you noticed how you can never fit the full width of a program listing on standard paper, well imagine if we made it twice as wide, we could also include feignt rulings to make it easier to scan the page.

Yeh ? What's that paperless office, let me tell you about.....

Just because something is New[s] does not make it better or actually new!

sigh...

um...what about terminal services?

[Drunken_Jackass]

It seems to me that Terminal Services combined with Citrix is a better deployment of this idea - it's more centrally managed, there aren't 150 actual devices that you still have to maintain, the winterms are just a quiet and idiot proof as these desktop boxes, and you can restrict the hell out of the apps you give people permission to use. Plus, you have a wide variety of deployement options. I think, while it looks cool and all, it doesn't really improve anything. In effect you gain another piece of equipment or two to troubleshoot, and you really don't gain a whole hell of a lot, if anything. Technology for technology's sake - aint it grand?!

Failed compile??

[green pizza]

Why would a failed compile require you to walk over to your computer? Debug your code and cc again.

Re:Failed compile??

[Kishar]

To grok joke, s/computer/monitor/
Enjoy.
--

Re:Failed compile??

[Omega996]

maybe he's compiling on windoze and needs to cold start the machine after every bsod.

The only problem is....

[eclectus]

That people can no longer play their cd's easily... I guess they will be forced to burn them to mp3, or get them from napster.

Just need the right terminal

[DG]

I've always considered our family Linux machine as being our "information furnace" - the same way the house furnace provides heating services, the computer is the "information furnace"

The problem is the terminals. What I want is:

- a decent sized screen (1024X768 in 17") that doesn't take up much space (so prolly LCD)
- a built-in USB hub, with jacks for keyboard, trackball, and joystick, plus one more for local devices (camera, scanner, printer, or whatever)
- a built-in CDRW drive
- built-in speakers, with audio in and out jacks
- ONE, count 'em, ONE power cord
- ONE, count 'em, ONE wire that routes to the main server
- CHEAP - like about $300 for the whole shebang.

The terminal would be a X real terminal, with no computing power to speak of locally, aside from whatever hardware is needed to make X work. No local hard drive. Just plug it in, and I have access to my main server (I suppose the CDRW would be NFS mounted)

Build this puppy, and the world will beat a path to your door.

Re:Just need the right terminal

[jimmcq]

You just described an iMac.

Re:Just need the right terminal

[shyster]

-a decent sized screen (1024X768 in 17") that doesn't take up much space (so prolly LCD) - a built-in USB hub, with jacks for keyboard, trackball, and joystick, plus one more for local devices (camera, scanner, printer, or whatever) - a built-in CDRW drive - built-in speakers, with audio in and out jacks - ONE, count 'em, ONE power cord - ONE, count 'em, ONE wire that routes to the main server - CHEAP - like about $300 for the whole shebang.

Ummm...just build me a CDRW and a 17" LCD for $300. I'll beat a path to your door.

Re:Just need the right terminal

[kimihia]

Last month I got sick and was unable to get out of bed. Fortunately I had a junk old 486 running OpenBSD beside my bed which I could use to SSH into my normal computer. I could even SSH in to work.

1024x768? BA! 1152x864x32 or 80x25x2. Nothing in between!

Re:Just need the right terminal

[altair1]

I don't see how you could have a CDRW in there. When making the CDs, the data has to be fed to the drive in a continuous, realtime stream. There is usually only a small buffer available to handle short interruptions.

It would be messy over ethernet...

Re:Just need the right terminal

[Raven667]

Oh, I don't know, I've burned about a half dozen CDs over NFS onto our shared CD-R drive and have yet to have a bad burn. Of course I usually only burn at 4 speed and just leave the terminal window open on an unused desktop. YMMV

Re:Just need the right terminal

[grey1]

to be honest, for me a decent sized screen would have to be double what an average one is right now, with a large one being about the size of a whiteboard (you know, those big things that hang on the wall that you write on). I want something big enough to get several application windows next to each other, rather than stacked one above the other... ...but of course I'm not willing to pay for it. Seriously, though, have you ever tried to fit several scientists around one monitor, even, say, a 24" one? It's hard work.

missing the point...

[avdp]

Of course you are missing the point...
The point of this is that it is easier to maintain the hardware because it's all in one location - that location could have UPSes, the proper aircon, etc, etc.

With terminal server still need a PC on people's desk (processor - maybe a cheaper one, RAM - maybe less, video card, ethernet adaptor, all the peripherals, etc). The only thing you've saved is on is the harddrive (possibly) - and quite frankly, harddrives are pretty cheap these days. Compaq (and others) sell these "terminals" - they are not that much cheaper than a low end machine - if at all.

Terminal server is designed to address software maintenance issue. These KVM type things are there to address hardware issues.

That's my take on the issue anyway.

Re:missing the point...

[silicon_synapse]

Another issue is that a terminal server will create a single point of failure. With these rack mount pcs, if a pc goes down it doesn't affect everyone else. If the terminal server goes down, everyone is screwed. Of course having all the rack mount pcs in one room would have it's issues too. If something happened to that one room, the whole building would be without computing.


--

Re:missing the point...

[Ubi_NL]

Obviously you do not know what you are talking about.
MS terminal server *is* a hardware solution, as all the users require is a small ($450) box on their desktop. These boxes do not contain CPU nor Hard drive, although they might have a video processor. This way you can share CPU time making it way more efficient.

The only thing that does not make this the cheapest solution for larger offcies is those %#&$ MS license fees

Re:missing the point...

[avdp]

Hummmm... no.

It has everything but the harddrive and expansion slots. Other than that, it's nothing but a very low end PC with a smaller case! Open one up, you'll see!

But here is a link for the specs for the compaq version. You'll note than they actually DO have an OS on them (win CE or linux) unlike what I had originally said.
http://www.compaq.com/products/quickspecs/10443_ na /10443_na.HTML

And $450 is not that cheap - you can go to best buy and get a computer for less than that.

Re:missing the point...

[avdp]

Sorry! Didn't mean to pick on you, this reply was intended for the guy that claims there are no CPU in a terminal server client.

SunRay or generic X Terminal

[green pizza]

Terminal server would work quite well. Set up a fairly powerful Sun server and install a bunch of SunRay terminals about the building. The hot session management is quite slick. Generic X terminals with an unix or unix-like host works well too. NCD makes some nice termials that work with X as well as Citrix/Windows.

Intersting but,

[selectspec]

I'd rather have the money spent on a better video card and a bigger monitor...

Re:Intersting but,

[BrK]

Yes, but you're (probably) speaking from a Gamer perspective. This is really more of a corporate product, where better video cards and bigger monitors are seldom the highest priority.

Re:Intersting but,

[selectspec]

Actually, I was speaking from an engineer's perspective. I like a nice 21" monitor with good crisp resolution for coding. And I still see lame video cards in the used refabs that occupy most startup shops. You really need 32MB at a mimimum for video with multiple desktops, vnc etc...

Anyway, this idea is really limited. First of all, I like to have the CDRom, disk drive, zip drive, etc handy. Also(this may be your point), I want to admin my own boxes. However, I suppose it has application in the Office environment.

Re:Intersting but,

[AnarchoFreak_00]

Or he could be speaking from a Video editor, 3D modeller, Animator, Graphic designer, Web designer (or anyone else who needs a big desktop for actualy working) perspective.

consider a windows + X solution

[green pizza]

Both NCD and Tektronix have terminals that handle Windows (Citrix/WinDD/WindowsTerminalServer) as well as X and even plain vt100 telnet sessions. Very cool setups. Walk up and login to whatever flavor machine you desire. Even xdmcp into your home linux/bsd/unix machine. Neat stuff.

Web service

[remande]

Finally, somebody has figured out a way to get enough PCs together to run an NT web site!

Ugh, web designers.

[AFCArchvile]

Click here to read about Lillian Vernon and how they use C3 architecture

First off, that's one of the lamest uses of Flash that I've ever seen. Secondly, of course a clothing designer would jump on this; they're paid to worry about appearances! What about the functionality aspect? Where's my CRT monitor that can handle almost any resolution I throw at it? And where the hell are my drives?!?!

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[MadMorf]

My plumber doesn't bitch when I clog pipes, and my V-dub mechanic doesn't complain about my rusty muffler.

One point you've overlooked is that YOU DON'T OWN THE COMPUTER ON YOUR DESK.

The company does.
The company pays the bills, so the company makes the rules.

And, speaking as one of those lazy IT folks, I'll tell you, when I start getting phone calls at 3am from a know-nothing user because he can't print, I don't give a flying f#%k what this loser thinks about our computing environmrnt.

Who uses graphics on a server??

[green pizza]

Why would any server farm have graphics on the servers? Plug the servers into the lan via eithernet and connect the serial/console port of the server into a Portmaster or similar terminal server. I never understood why sooo many folks think that their servers need to have framebuffers/gfxcards/"video"cards.

Re:Who uses graphics on a server??

[Omega996]

c'mon, this is slashdot - everyone here thinks the world runs on intel.

Sounds famillar.

[shippo]

A few years ago I was tidying up the storeroom at work and came across some really weird hardware. This consisted of a pizza-box style unit with an EGA video port, a keyboard port and a serial/mouse port. There was also another connector which resembled a SCSI-2 port. I had no idea what these things were.

A few hours later I discovered a full-length card with 2 on-board 80286 processors, and simillar SCSI-2 like connectors. Also with the card were a pair of long cables for connecting everything together.

I later found the documentation, but not the relevant software. The card went in a Netware server, and acted as a pair of pseudo-PCs, with all filesystems running off the netware server. The idea dated from around 1989. The SCSI-2 like cable carried all the video, keyboard and mouse signals, whilst pizza-box unit presented them to the relevant hardware. I've no idea of the maximum range of these, but the cables with the card were only around 10 feet long.

There was also a version that had 4 8086-class processors on a board, and used dumb terminals to emulate the PC screen and keyboard.

This is perfect for that Windows brainwashed jerk

[InfoSec]

who insists on rebooting his Linux box when he thinks that something is wrong and ruining my uptime stats at the office!!!


Deven Phillips, CISSP
Network Architect
Viata Online, Inc.

SLASHDOT ADMINS: Why isn't there a moderation...

[Anonymous Coward]

... option for "Uninformed"?

Money is not always a key concern

[green pizza]

AFAIK, the support cost of your average corporate personal computer is often higher than what the machine itself costs. Not to mention that cost is not always the sole concern, especially at firms that have huge profits -- many can afford to spend a little (or a lot) more. Do you really think they need $800 Aereon chairs at every desk?

Increase in tech support calls

[CyberLife]

With this technology, tech support calls will increase. No longer will users be able to simply reboot their machines when Win-whatever crashes. They'll have to call support to do it for them. :P

- Milo Hyson

Terminals, thin clients, etc

[Mike Hicks]

I think this falls very close to the line of terminals and thin clients that we've seen as office components up to this point. To tell the truth, I think that terminal-like devices are the best way to go when in a large organization. It's far easier when you're basically dealing with installing software on a few servers, rather than tens or hundreds of desktops. Also, when user data is stored on a server rather than a desktop system, it's much easier to keep it all safely backed up.

The problem with the terminal/thin-client idea is that it can put a very heavy load on the server, though there are ways around these problems. Thin clients were created in order to lessen the burden of processing power and disk usage on the server. (Actually, most thin clients I've seen mostly only reduce the processing requirements on the server, not disk requirements). Advanced network filesystems that heavily cache data (probably by writing it to a local disk) also help, but I haven't seen them implemented in many places.

Of course, Windows is not a good operating system for this sort of environment.. Multi-user features have been tacked on, from what I've seen.
--

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[Meridun]

Hey, can I have some of your users to support?

I'm a developer/DBA at a 100 person telemarketing finance company, and unfortunately, most of our users have trouble figuring out how to successfully login some days. They do not experiment, they do not customize, hell, they don't even use most of the stuff we give them.

This system sounds damned fine for those sorts of users, since it would VASTLY reduce wiring costs, as well as keep us from lugging the damned boxes all over the building.

Sure, I love having my own customizable system under my desk, but most of our users don't even know what box is the CPU ("Hey, why isn't this powering on? ... Um, that's the monitor, dumbass"). If this was to be a reasonable price, we'd probably buy them in a heartbeat.

Running Windoze

[karld]

BSOD. Who the heck is gonna push the reset button 200 meters away????

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[Burnon]

Take a deep breath. These guys want to make money. If an IT department has users who need real flexibility, they'll give them the "cube" that has a usb port (http://www.clearcube.com/products_cport4.html), and then they'll be able to install from media. Most users will be able to download stuff from the internet, anyway. All this c-cube does is make hardware support a little easier, and gives sysadmins a little more control. Smart sysadmins won't be draconian.

Seems to me that Citrix is a better solution

[lazn]

Citrix Metaframe basically does this, only with a terminal server...

You can then use thin clients on the other end, instead of, or as well as PC's (even an old 486 will do it)

==>Lazn

Re:Seems to me that Citrix is a better solution

[Luminous]

Citrix, with its new web interfaces, is also a solution for remote workers. Overall, a Citrix server is a great investment for smaller companies with these kind of issues. But I was under the impression the server kind of caps out at a rather low number of users, meaning running several servers in tandem (with balancing issues) for larger companies.

Return to the big iron

[gwjc]

I can remember sitting on my crappy dumb terminal. Yearning for the micro-PC that was going to sit on my desk someday. Just when I finally get a machine on my desk to replace the big iron in the other room.. they're going to come and take it away from me.. and give me a crappy dumb terminal again.. Dammit!
Seriously though.. I'd be happy to have a nice keyboard/terminal combo I could take from room to room to outside as long as it's way cheaper than a laptop.
From an IT POV I guess it's nice to know people won't 'accidentally' spill Jolt on to their MB just to get an upgrade or put that virii laden diskette their brother-in-law gave them over Christmas in the FD anymore.
sic semper tyrannis

Great Idea

[Degauss This!]

Not necessarily for user pc's but DEFINATELY for servers. DB servers, print servers, web servers, switches, routers,,,. Have them all centrally located and rack mounted is an excellent idea. Easy to find(!) easy to upgrade, and easy to keep cool (not to mention only having to super cool just one room), easy to cable...

I'm beginning to drool.

Degauss This!

Re:hitting the point...

[nehril]

if "the point" is to have an easy to maintain user environment, then terminal services are still better and directly compete with this system. there are no distance limitations (subject to network restrictions), no possiblility of video degradation or other "new technology strangeness."

Price considerations aside, you still have to put *something* on the user's desktop (keyboard, monitor, mouse) and throwing a thin client with no hard drive or other maintenance issues is not that far of a leap. In addition you get all the benefits of software distribution and remote control of user's desktops (with the citrix software anyways). And you don't have to have a data center class closet within 200 feet of the user. The same terminal servers can be used by people across wan or dialin links, which can be a lifesaver for those bandwidth heavy apps.

I have yet to see a corporate environment that would be better served by lots of powerhungry, administrator-labor-intensive rackmount PCs than by a terminal server setup.

I definitely see these rackmounts as better than "desktops on desks", but still not as good as effective as other solutions.

Affordable rackmount kits?

[Quietti]

On a somewhat related issue:

Does anybody have any lead on affordable rackmount kits to fit a standard AT-size motherboard? Most kits I have seen so far come out at twice the price of an ordinary ATor ATX desktop case, but perhaps someone has found better and could tell us where to buy from. Alternately, I also heard of really cheap all-in-one motherboards with a built-in 2.5" EIDE drive, decent graphics card and 10/100baseT NIC that are actually designed to be rackmounted but I have yet to run into such beasts. Can anyone tell us more?

Like many others here, I have this collection of various architectures, running either some BSD or some Linux, but all are currently sitting in the average mini-AT, with all cases stashed up ontop of each other into a nice babel tower, and then a secondary problem is some BIOSes refuse to boot if no keyboard or graphics card is found, which is not nice after a power failure. Given that (as others in this thread pointed out) I only really need one workstation with a good display and keyboard, other machines would preferably sit nicely in a rack case and be considered servers, yet be affordable enough to assemble and maintain. Nice idea, but how?

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[dasmegabyte]

So you're a loser for not knowing how to print. Great. Sorry the whole world doesn't have a degree in computer science, but sometimes it isn't as easy as you may think it is. Take a windows environment. You're a new user who's never touched a PC and you need to print a document to a network with no printer set up on the machine and no "icon" based printing in the app. Are you going to know to browse network neighbourhood, right click the printer and select install printer, and then select "print" off the file menu (printing, i might add, doesn't seem to have anything to do with "files").

Remember, tech support is education, and whether you like it or not you're going to deal with "know nothings" just trying to get their fucking job done. And if you can't explain it to them so that they understand and don't do it again, it's entirely your fault, and you have no right to complain. If a monkey can be trained to hit buttons in the right order, so can ANY person.

They do have a niche

[Ubi_NL]

In my old company, we did use terminal server systems. Unfortunately some people in that group (including myself) did some very CPU-intensive things (optimizing multimillion record databases, compiling big programs etc etc). Whenever we 'took control' the rest of the workforce could go for their coffee break, as all of their CPU supply was eaten by our process.

In such an environment the CPU blades might be usefull

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[dasmegabyte]

True: that is a different environment and i'm sure you have a pretty high user turnaround time. But consider this: if even one user realises that they can speed up their day by running "Autodial.exe" off the start->run bar rather than hunting for it on the harddrive, you've sped up the day's productivity. And if they speed up theirs, chances are they'll educate their fellows on the same process. It's stepwise procedural efficiency increases that are far more valuable to a company than weeks of tech training that are soon forgotten, because they are free and do not require any R&D hours. Of course, flashy scripts and access reports are nice, but if your workers are willing to do the same thing with a SQL script (even if they don't know exactly what the script does), the company is better off.

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[e_n_d_o]

At my work we use thinner clients than most people do. All of the developers are running Linux, RH6.2 right now. Logins are centralized using NIS, and our home dirs and several of our key applications are hosted on the NFS server. The entire network is switched 100MBit ethernet. The idea is this:

1.) Anyone can use any workstation like it is their own.

2.) All your data is hosted on the server and is thus backed up. You only have access to /tmp on your local machine.

3.) If a machine dies, it doesn't matter. Chances are there is an extra one laying around, and if their isn't setup can be completed in 2hrs.

4.) Applications can be installed on the server and used by everyone.

Everyone in the department loves this setup, including those who have would have the authority to have a "standalone" machine if they wanted. This is really not relevant to most offices, as Windows is fairly incapable of being setup in this fashion in its current iteration. (And, yes, all you MS folks can bash away at how you can solve this problem using unbelievably skilled NT admins with unlimited budgets, but I'm talking about the real world here)
--

Buy Used (wasRe:cheap rackmounts? cheap cabinets?)

[Nonesuch]

I've seen cabinets show up dirt cheap on the used market, at business auctions, in the University spare furniture redistribution, etc.

Rackmount PC hardware is still expensive, but rackmount fullsize cases aren't all that pricey- the real money goes for systems optimized to use as few rack-inches as possible.

If all else fails, you can buy threaded rack rails and build your own cabinet around them.

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[kettch]

I agree with some of your points, but i feel that not everyone can qualify as being "normal". There are some people at the hospital that i work at that are so incompetent about computers that we don't even want to go to their desks. We use registry hacks to lock down all workstations, and we are really happy about having win2k so that we can restrict even further. (it would be cool to have our users use linux, but the bootup kernel messages would make them call the helpdesk).

Our users don't even need to know how to use alot of computer features. On win95 boxen we don't have complete control over whether they can install, but we make sure that they know who is boss, and what they can't do. I suppose that whether you let users mess with their own computers depends on the environment. In a healthcare situation, there are a lot of healthcare specific applications. None of them work too well on their own, and if we let the users install stuff on/tweak their computers, they would be doomed.
----------------------

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[shyster]

Bullshit. Nobody needs this. The reason you have a desktop rather than a thin client is that you need the ability to improvise in the course of your day. We have finance folks that use SQL scripts to generate usage reports, developers who use MS Word and Excel quite a bit, and management folks who use a wide array of tools, each in their own distinct manner. Corporate IT was shocked to discover that people had not only installed software on their machines that they (IT) hadn't anticipated them needing, but that they had done so flawlessly and used the software in the course of their day -- software like multiple browsers, spam silencers, adbusters and scripts.

First off, this isn't a thin client. It's simply a smallish PC that sits 200 yards away. Nothing, except for the lack of a floppy or CD-ROM drive, and group polices, will prevent you from installing your software.

Secondly, "multiple browsers, spam silencers, adbusters, and scripts" don't exactly seem that prodctive to me. Unless you're a web developer, I don't see why you'd need multiple browsers. You shouldn't be getting that much spam on your corporate email address, and Outlook has filtering rules to help with the ones you do get. If you're really making good use of an adbuster, then you're spending too much time on the Internet. Get to work. Scripts? Well, that depends what kind of scripts we're talking about here, but, in general, scripts are a potential security threat.

Not to mention the headaches involved with spyware in a corporate environment, possible viruses and trojans, licensing issues, incompatibilities, etc. And, then, to top it off, you people expect IT to support this crap!?! I don't think so...if you really want to load that stuff on your computer, then support it yourself. If somethign goes wrong, the first thing I'm doing is removing all that crap from your computer. And RealPlayer is not a productivity tool...don't try to argue with me.

QOTD: "No, I'm not happy to see you. That's a Ghost image in my pocket."

Our concern is the cost of maintaining PCs

[anomaly]

I work in the IT department for a very large company. We have some smart guys who work very hard to make sure that PCs work. By this I mean that all of the devices in the box work properly, that users can take their off-the-shelf commodity PCs and actually use them to communicate with our business IT systems.

We create "enterprise clients" from "PCs."

What we're finding is that the cost to maintain the PCs is incredibly high. Of course, the cost of software licensing, auditing licensed software, etc is not tiny.

We're looking to find a cheap solution that allows users to have access to the software tools they need and at the same time is inexpensive to maintain. Users today install software on their PCs which cause those devices to no longer work in our environment. (AOL 6.0 anyone?)

We've looked at MetaFrame/Terminal server, which simplifies the device at the user's desk, but adds cost on the back end. Additionally, we get to pay full software license costs for all users, including CALs. It's not cheap, but it is cheaper than distributed systems.

BTW - license compliance isn't something we can ignore if we use Open Source. I've recently witnessed/participated in a great debate in the Ximian-Evolution channel about whether the OpenLDAP license is compatible with the GPL. This sort of thing is a BIG deal to Fortune 1000 companies. Open Source is great in a large number of ways, but IS NOT a panacea!

I've inquired with SCO about Tarantella, and am waiting for information from them.

I'm not looking to get everything for free, just hoping for a paradigm shift that lowers overall costs!

It doesn't really matter what the OS is that's running on all of those distributed PCs. Whether it's Linux, Windows, Mac OS, or anything else, the complexity lies at the user end. Reducing that complexity reduces cost of management.

It's a business thing. Does the device help us make money, or does it cause us to lose money? Is the distributed, unlocked PC a good investment, or is it a money-loser?

Sorry to be rambling here, but I've been scratching my head for quite a while about this one. If we had a cheap XTerm type device which also spoke ICA, that would be nice.

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas about this?

Regards,
Anomaly

One Problem With This...

[Trekologer]

The system in its entirety is propriatery, leaving you to the mercy of them for replacement parts. If you invest in their system then the company goes under, you're stuck with a very expensive system with no supply of parts. You can't just run out and buy a "Big Joe's Computer Parts" brand motherboard in a repair pinch.

While this looks neat (it seems that it could be used over existing Cat5 network wires) and everything is centralized, its a risky investment.

Great Idea - If 200m is REALLY 200m (indoors)

[baptiste]

This is a great concept - heck our network closets got a lot roomier when we went from old 10BaseT hubs that were huge compared to the new switched 100BaseT ATM edge switches. Leaving plenty of room for these suckers, though I expect a rack full of 1U PCs would put out a ton of heat that the network closets couldn't handle!

Having hte PC under your desk just made a good footstool - Trust me - I was an IT manager for Desktops & Servers at an R&D lab - the PCs got so dirty and banged up but hardly anyone touched them (except with their feet :( ) The only ones who actually used them (for Cds and stuff) were the IT guys.

However I do have to say the lack of a CD-ROM could be a problem (hmm maybe we go back to the shared tape drive days and have a shared CD-ROM tower near each closet LOL)

But imagine the savings on net wiring, maintenance, etc. I hope this idea gets some traction!

--

This is not for us

[SurfsUp]

The "new" comes from the application of over thirty patents covering data transmission, computing models, and wire characteristics over long distances.

Translation: as soon as we get our customer base guess what? Up goes the price, hah hah, we're the only supplier, you can't affort\d to back out of this now. Imagine for a moment what life would be like if Microsoft had patents on the PC.

A far superior solution is to run a nice fast fanless PC, a laptop say, with an ethernet cable. All standard, all open. That's what I'm doing right now and I'm perfectly happy.

What this company's promo says to me is: hey, we don't have a clue how to provide the best solution at the lowest price, so we're going to rely on our patents and hype.
--

Have you looked around?

[sniglet999]

Dell's mboards are non standard, HP's mboards are nonstandard, I won't even MENTION Compaq (oops, just did.)

Re:Have you looked around?

[Trekologer]

sniglet999> Dell's mboards are non standard, HP's mboards are nonstandard, I won't even MENTION Compaq (oops, just did.)

Yes, but I don't see Dell or HP or Compaq going out of business anytime soon. ClearCube (the company that makes this system) has one and only one product. While its a good idea, IMHO, its only one product. And a quarter of slow sales can result in them ceasing to exist.

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[kav.latiolais]

This is not a thin client solution the only thing you lose is physical access to the box and unless you are installing hardware you don't need that access. They are plain independant machines not terminal service boxes and not timeshare clones. The only time you lose your shit is when they pull one and put in a new one without telling you which no IT group in their right mind would do.

Just think of the Clusters....

[squeegee-me]

Looks like a great idea for people building clustes, but then again...

I was also wondering if these things say on 24/7 instead of powering down like a usual user's PC?

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[Denial of Service]

At my work we use thinner clients than most people do.

Dude, don't be so descriminatory -- maybe it's glandular.

---

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[kav.latiolais]

If you buy machines from dell that overheat STOCK than they ARE lemons. You pay Dell a premium so that the shit they send you works and you don't have resort to a duct tape software fix for computers that shouldn't be overheating. And Dell will fix the problem without a word because they know you could get cheaper machines down the street that need a software idler and your paying them for the support. If it doesn't work right out of the box than it doesn't work.

But it costs more

[herbierobinson]

Nobody will buy it because it costs more. The whole reason people buy PCs is because they are the cheapest thing out there. And they always buy the cheapest ones.

Re:But it costs more

[salad_PhD]

The cost of these (per CPU) is at least comparable, if not better. ~$1100 per blade (read machine). The idea here is to have most of the company desktops centrally managed. Even though initially the idea wasn't one of saving money, I think they've done a good job in making the pricing comparable to a desktop.

Re:What a great solution, (truncated)

[Kishar]

Wait a minute. I thought that OS was "User Friendly(tm)" and "Intuitive(tm)". Shouldn't this preclude the need for a CS degree?
In the world of logic, we call this "having your cake and eating it too." Perhaps it isn't the tech's fault, but the society that bought the "intuitive" line of bullshit.

printing, i might add, doesn't seem to have anything to do with "files"
And the START button has nothing to do with shutting off a computer.
--

WTF?

[mbourgon]

Nice idiotic rant, but it has nothing to do with this story. This story is about centralized PCs. They all fit on a rack. It's still controlled by the end user. It doesn't come with a Floppy or CD? Big whoop. It comes with at least 2 USB ports, as well as a parallel port for removable storage decives. The only down side for these things is that your users can't pop it open and add their own cards. Again, Big Whoop. Read the story next time.

Re:WTF?

[dasmegabyte]

My rant wasn't about the centralized pc idea, it was the offshoot concept of hotswappable workstations. With non-distributed windows PCs (which is what I work with, please don't hand me a "go UN*X line" because I will write you off as a troll who doesn't understand my work environment), this means no installing programs on your machine, no customizing settings, no nothing -- because if you get even so much as a dead harddrive, out goes your machine, in comes a new one. Of course, this could be offset with common backups, but backups of a lot of user machines is kind of a useless process...

This might be a good idea if combined with a type of REVRDIST, to backup anything that isn't on a centralized application mirror to a user folder for movement back to a new local machine. Theoretically, with this combination, IT could take out the busted-ass machine, stick in a new one, re-dist the custom info and have you back up with a clone of your previous machine, all in the time it takes to wander down the hall and get a packet of cheez-its.

Re:WTF?

[dregoth]

*cough* roaming profiles *cough*

Noisy Computers

[MikeyLikesIt!]

With all the fans in modern computers, many non-geek people find them extremely noisy and annoying, especially if there are a lot of them crammed into a small (otherwise noiseless) room.

This sounds like a good solution - just stick all of the office computers onto a rack in a closet somewhere - problem solved!

Re:hitting the point...

[avdp]

The point is there are two issues: hardware maintenance and software maintenance. KVM-lookalikes and Terminal Server. Apples and oranges.

Now quite frankly, as far as software maintenance is concerned, since you're the one bringing all this up, I'll tell you that you can do just as well if not better in a windows environment mapping network drives and using tools such as NetWizard (or equivalent). And as a bonus you don't have that gigantic bottleneck/single point of failure that Terminal Server is.

On borrowed time though

[parc]

This company is right up the road from me. There was an article in the paper the other day saying they had to let people go and were having problems getting funding.

The funny thing is, until I saw that article in the paper, I'd drive by every day and try and figure out what the *hell* they could possibly sell: acryllic office furniture? Now I know.

And the point is???

[Delight-Delirium]

It sounds nifty, easy to manage, but who here would actually want it? Even if they don't have any of those menacing floppy or Zip drives, gee we'd better make sure they can't use any of those pesky CDs, else someone may give them, a -- Spreadsheet!! Never mind that user w/o adminisrative access can't install much. Then lets point out that the time users have to spend frustrated without a workstation due to repairs, is simply their well deserved punishment for screwing it up in the first place. It was working fine when I gave it to you, so, yes, i think it was obviously something that YOU did to it!! And besides, i don't trust those support people, they're always looking at everyone funny, like there's something that only they know about. Its a conspiracy, I don't trust them. Leave my PC where i can see it!

FP

[ReidMaynard]

First post eludes me
April sunshine makes me slow
Almost five O'Clock

Re:What a great solution, (truncated)

[dasmegabyte]

Well, i agree with that. But think about this: user friendly doesn't mean not having to learn anything, but not having to learn anything TWICE. Which is one of the reasons UN*X has completely missed the boat from a UI perspective. Like the button placement of one application? Well, short of rewriting the others, you'll never see it again. As stupidly named as the FILE and EDIT menus are, they institute a layer of elelementary conformity which makes the utilization of a new application that much easier.

But you've GOT to learn it that first time...make that first step. You can't get mad (as I have for years) at your mother for being confused as to where the START bar went because you use Autohide on your desktop, because she looks for the bar, not cues as to where it went.

I love my mother, but she's a complete idiot when it comes to computation. I think that if we can get her to understand anything about the internet, PCs or even printing from Create-a-Card, UI will finally be in the golden age.

Where's that PC?

[cornflux]

I want my PC on my desk dammit (sic).

Not me; I want my PC wherever I am, damnit.

Gee, where have I seen this before??

[theEd]

Next thing to do is merge all the blades into a single machine, so that you can dynamically delgate resources to users. Then you have... dare I say... a mainframe. But Mr. Gates said the mainframe was dead.

Well he's wrong, the 'frame is coming back...

No if they could just build an OS that has mainframe uptime, just imagine what a wonderful world that would be.

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[dasmegabyte]

Lockdowns breed stupidity. C'mon, how are you supposed to tell if you screwed something up or if you're just not supposed to do it. And a registry hacker like yourself knows as well as anybody that there are always loopholes, always tricks to tunnel through. We had an old mac print station that didn't get rid of the desktop hook to a disk if you ejected using the Special menu, the vulcan mac meld (Open Apple - SHIFT - 1), or a "paperclip" to eject, as many of the PC paradigm people who consider tactile ejecting the only solution to removing data from a machine are wont to do. Which meant when you'd insert a new disc, the mac thought "great, i'll use the hook I already have and associate the data with the disc again." If you ejected "Charles," and the new disc was called "Martinez," you couldn't access it until you properly Option-dot'd through the error messages and dragged the disc to the trash (the real way to get anything out of a mac, if only i could drag this shitty ATI video card to it). All in all, it was an involved, confusing process...all because the mac admin didn't want users to be able to fully interact with the desktop and, hence, the main volume of the machine.

We switched to a much more simple "print from anywhere, then authenticate from a single station" interface which has become so popular, we've got a paper problem: we're using fifteen times as much. Mac users who needed to print weren't doing so because it was too confusing.

Moral: if you restrict a user from doing something once, they begin to fear the boundary. Users who fear machines are not going to learn anything -- they gain a mystique, which is the last thing you want from a supportability standpoint. Though I love walking up to a mac with a stuck disc, and whispering "My mind to your mind; my thoughts to your thoughts...COME OUT!" as I, unseen to the hapless user, press SHIFT-Open Aapl-1...

opaqueRACK?

[suwain_2]

This is a nifty idea and all, but... Did anyone else notice that it's a rectangle? The G4 Cube is a cube shape. (More or less...) This is not.

In addition, it is by no means clear. I suppose you could do one of those nifty case mods where you cuts the side panels out and put in plexiglass. But until that happens...

...I suggest we call this an "opaqueRACK," as it is both opaque and in a standard rack-server enclosure. Perhaps we can follow in the footsteps of Cue:Cat and many other companies, and introduce random characters, too... "opaque*RAQ" sounds much better, doesn't it? ;)
________________________________________________

My problem...

[cr0sh]

Let me first describe my computing area:

Currently, I have two PCs (one running Linux, always on, with a UPS, and the other Windows, hardly ever on nowadays) sitting under a folding table, which sits in the middle of the room. A 19 inch monitor sits on top of the table, with a keyboard in front of it, a printer and scanner on one side, and a hub (which is hooked to a cable modem/router combo in a back room, with another PC on it - but it isn't the problem) on the other. I have a ton of cables everywhere running along the floor on the back - a real rat's nest. There are other cables running to/along the ceiling for power, telephone, networking, and sound, as well. The two machines are connected to the monitor via a cheesy 4 port rotary switch, which drives the monitor and keyboard - I have two different mice, one for each machine.

This is turning out to not be an optimal solution for me.

It is better than what I had, because now it is easy for me to work on the boxes when I need to - go to the front of the desk, pop the cables off, pull the case out, and play - before I had my desk against a wall, and it was hell to reach under, pull the machine out a bit, undo the connections, then to redo the connections, I had to use a flashlight, because there wasn't enought light.

Anyhow, I am looking for something better - and cheap - to handle the switching (I could add two more machines to my setup, but the hell in cabling and such that would mean - shudder), plus, I would like my machines to be farther "away" from the table.

I have thought about a custom rackmount solution (building my own rack, etc), maybe mounting the motherboards in the rack on pull-out shelves, and provide a custom cooling solution, but the switching issue is still there - if I could make the shelves pull-out style, the ease of working on everything would be easier, but I still wouldn't have any way to switch the monitor/keyboard/mouse.

I wonder whether I should go with using USB for the keyboard and mouse (will this work under Linux? I am using SuSE 6.3 right now - with a patched 2.2.14 kernel - and the other machine is Win 98) - or stick with PS/2 keyboard/mouse - and switch all of that - gah!

I am needing a custom switching solution - cheap to boot. There are commercial systems, but the price rises ultra-rapidly once you get past 2-3 pc's...

Has anybody had and tackled this problem before?

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[dasmegabyte]

First off, this isn't a thin client. It's simply a smallish PC that sits 200 yards away. Nothing, except for the lack of a floppy or CD-ROM drive, and group polices, will prevent you from installing your software.

Any time you talk about hotswappable machines, you're restricted to a thin client. Can't install a lot of software if you get a new machine every time you bluescreen.

Secondly, "multiple browsers, spam silencers, adbusters, and scripts" don't exactly seem that prodctive to me. Unless you're a web developer, I don't see why you'd need multiple browsers. You shouldn't be getting that much spam on your corporate email address, and Outlook has filtering rules to help with the ones you do get. If you're really making good use of an adbuster, then you're spending too much time on the Internet. Get to work. Scripts? Well, that depends what kind of scripts we're talking about here, but, in general, scripts are a potential security threat.

Fuck security -- internally, security causes more messes for file sharing and application sharing than it will ever catch. Firewall, VPN, and then call it quits. As for multiple browsers: everybody in the house needs them, because when we put out a fire we need every step of the process from tech support to affiliate support to QA to be on the same plane. If they aren't, we're not going to solve a thing.

Spyware is much less an issue, but it's once again IT's job. They monitor our machines for licensing issues, viruses and illicit connections across the network, and it's all done autonomously...they don't do squat unless something breaks. And realplayer, alas, isn't an option...we all need it because we server realmedia content! Even if it wasn't, it's easy for IT to say "we dont' support it," but that's not their fucking JOB. Their job is to find out where the incompatibility is and to make sure they have a solution or a workaround. Simply locking it down or ignoring it won't make the problem go away...and there's not an It manager on earth with the balls to tell the CEO he can't listen to the baseball game over Real Networks while he goes over the employee records to see who's expendable and who isn't because the software isn't supported.

Re:What a great solution, (truncated)

[IntlHarvester]

What a bizarre argument. "Windows doesn't run on mind-control yet, therefore the training costs between all systems are identical".

Doesn't work that way bubb. Anyone in who has been in the business for more than a few years can tell you that 10x more users know how to push the Printer icon on Word than press Shift-Alt-F7 in ye olde DOS WordPerfect.

If you want to blame someone, blame the penny-wise pound-foolish managers that cut virtually all corporate computer training, and be suprised that users muddle along using computers at all with no education.

Or blame the upper-level techs that insist on running a headless-chicken circus where they run around fixing people's printer mappings, instead of instituting a locked-down, centrally-managed environment. It's not as if that's a big secret.
--

Re:What a great solution, like public transportati

[dasmegabyte]

When a customer or client needs a machine NOW, and the only one that is available is guaranteed to shut down because we haven't taken a simple step to fix it, I do not feel justified in telling that user "I'm sorry, this computer is available, but will crash because Dell will not admit it is broken and we will not fix it because we are trying to prove a point."

They didn't, by the way, fix it without a word...they bitched constantly about it and eventually the machines all died while in use and added up to one of the worst decisions we ever made. There are those in this department who will not buy celeron machines ever, despite their superior P/P ratio, because of this batch of lemons. So what did they cost us? $1400 per machine for 40 machines, plus an additional $200-$400 for every new box we buy since mg'mt won't okay celerons. Not to mention the intangible loss and increase in frustrations when our clients got bluescreens (which, on these machines, happened multiple times, daily. don't deal me this "all MS machines crash" shit, because this machine has NEVER BSOD'd and neither have any of our other dev boxes, some of which are repurposed celerons). All of this could have been fixed by a simple piece of software...but we wanted to prove a point. I guarantee you that the customer's didn't care about our quixotian pursuit of justice...they cared about their lost data.

Schools

[bdrexler]

This would be perfect for networks in school districts. Wouldn't have to worry about students playing UT or using the CD-Rom for a cupholder.....

Clustering ClearCubes

[salad_PhD]

These things are great. I wouldn't replace my desktop box with one, but I bought a ton of them for our streaming/web clusters at work. Since we colo our equipment, rackspace costs can get really high. With the clearcubes we fit 8 streaming/web boxes in 3U worth of space. With the cost of each CC blade running between $900 and $1200 you can throw tons of these behind a load balancer without killing your budget.

They do have some issues though:

No redundant power supplies.

They're rumored to have a field installable hack that changes the Cat5 C-Port port (the C-Port is the thing your monitor/mouse/etc connect to) into an additional NIC, but by doing so, you disable console access.

You have to have the CC cage (it houses the blades) to do a non-network OS install.

You have to use USB to get a CD or floppy drive.

For OS installs you have to either ghost an OS to the HD, or use PXE and ghost to do a network install.

I've asked them if they would do a pseudo-server class version of the ClearCube. Even if they take up 2 blade slots for a server version you can still get a higher density (there are 8 blade slots in each chassis) in 3U than you could with 1U servers.

If they could give me a dual NIC version that still had the console port on it I would be very happy.

If they integrated an Outlook box into the cage (or at least a C-Port to KVM dongle) I would be ecstatic.

If they did a (2 blade sized) server version with dual procs, dual nics, lots-'o-ram, scsi and a pci slot (or PCI to Fibre port) I would switch over just about everything in my streaming architectures to them.

Re:Clustering ClearCubes

[salad_PhD]

Oh yeah, they also support Linux too! :)

This is new?

[VivianC]

The place I used to work did this with Compaq 200MMX machines on shelves in racks. They used a DB25 cable between repeaters to throw the signal.

Main problem was that they were doing it with Windows 95 and NT machines. Someone always had to be available to run downstairs and reboot some machine. And just imagine how many reboots you get on 300 Windows machines in an average day!


Viv
-----------

ClearCubes

[wiedmeister]

My company has been using ClearCUBES for about 6 months, and apart from stupid users shutting them down instead of restarting them, they work great.

Uhmm.. Hello? FreeVision

[Necron69]

This is nothing new. I use a similar product every day called CCC Freevision. All of our machines are nicely racked away in a machine room down the hall. See: http://www.cccnetsys.com/products-freevision.html for more information. - Necron69

marketing people doing webpages...

[ddent]

I was reading their page and couldn't help notice that UPS now stands for "universal power supply"... if it weren't for the fact that I can be pretty sure they had marketing person do their web page, it would really put me off from buying their products...

Oh the clutter!

[shokk]

Imagine these anacondas of cables coming out of everyone's desks and trunking into the computer room where a wall of these cubes is stored. Imagine the users with no access to headphones, floppies, or CD drives. Imagine the cooling needed to have 20,000 of these running in one area instead of dispersed through the building. I imagine this will be as useful as the Ronco Pocket Goat Slicer.

I've been thinking about doing this myself

[drinkypoo]

I think you could do about the same thing, much more cheaply. Sure, it wouldn't be supported, but that's your problem, right? You're a geek, and not afraid of little issues like that.

All that said: What's stopping the rest of us from building a simple rackmount case, slapping a power supply in it, and putting a bunch of SBCs in it, along with an 8-port 100mbps switch (10/100 not necessary if everything is the same) and just plugging it all together? You can add disk if you want, but personally I'm in favor of diskless workstations in a scenario like that. If you use a real OS (cough cough) then you don't have to worry about rebooting all the time. A system like that, unfortunately, is only really well-suited to batch processing, but people who are currently spending beaucoup dollars on farms of machines to run their verilog jobs might want to look into it.

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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US