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HP Introduces Transmeta Thin Clients
prostoalex writes "HP will announce the T5500 and T5300 thin clients on Monday at the TechEX show in New York City, which use the 733-MHz and 533-MHz versions of Transmeta's TM5800 CPU. Prices range from $599 to $629."
When are we going to see the Transmeta chips' unique code morphing technology used for something OTHER than just making unexceptional x86 clones with questionable benefit over just a normal intel/amd chip?
It's nice to see Transmeta doing SOMETHING, but it still looks like they've been running themselves in circles since the day they first used a product.
Never mind the PC world for a minute. Is Transmeta having ANY luck selling their chips for use in embedded systems?
Thin clients are an excellent, though not new, idea. One of the big advantages of thin clients is cost. A thin client device that supports the RDP or Citrix ICA protocols can be had for just a couple of hundred dollars but, if you want X Term support the cost is through the roof. I want to know why the X capable clients cost so much more than the Winterm clients. I can't see any real justification for this.
Most recently, the sun ray is about half the price, has cool take-your-session-anywhere technology, and last I heard isn't selling like hotcakes. So either HP knows something I don't or this is just more evidence of clueless management...
I have a Transmeta 533 in the form of a Sonic Blue frontpath surfpad.
It is a wonderful toy, but too slow for human consumption, modern software just craaawls, and it only works as a surfpad via a thin and tuned Netscape 4.7. OOo is painfully slow. MP3 playback worked OK.
The only use I can see for this kind of device, and I admit that it'd be enough for me, is for remote ssh administration of my servers with some music rocking in the headset.
ssh runs just dandy on a 533 Mhz Crusoe. Anything with pretty pictures does _not_.
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Which also runs at 733Mhz and can be made to run Linux, to act as a web server and a myriad of other apps. Granted, it's not a 'thin' client so much as a 'who's eaten all the pies' client, in physical size at least. But it's still quite compact compared to tower PCs. Plus MS supposedly loses money on each box sold which should surely encourage some enterprising admin would set up an X-Box powered office.
I am actually testing the VIA M10000 motherboard right now for a potential office rollout. Even with their 1GHz proc's, they will rival most machines for basic word processing, e-mail, and client-server apps. I can put one together for $500 cdn, and it will handle everthing the office wants it to, for 1/3 of the cost of a new PC.
I have a slew of 733mhz computers with 128MB at the office that run Windows 2000 extremely well. My friends and I decided a while back that 600mhz is about all you need with any modern operating system. Beyond that you're just gaming.
It's a thin client, man. Web, email, word processing, maybe play some tunes or desktop games.
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Thin clients may be useful in some limited business applications. But, it does not seem to be a very big niche.
There is growing demand for small linux server boxes. Either for network use, as a T1/DSL router/firewall/VPN box. Or, as a small LAN server, doing things like DNS/DHCP in a corporate environment. Or, as an everything server for Home/DSL use, WWW/SMTP+spam-asassin/Proxy/DNS/DHCP/etc.
If someone could package the TM5800 in a small form factor case, with no fans, and a drive bay for either a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD, it could be an excellent gateway/server platform. It has extremely low power consumption specs, and can even reduce the clock rate when not in heavy use. It runs cool enough to run without a cooling fan, and be completely silent - other than the hard drive.
Very true, at 733MHz, the Transmeta chips they are using are NO WHERE CLOSE to being as fast as a PIII or Athlon of the same clock speed. In reality, the performance of these chips have a tough time matching 400MHz Celeron processors, let alone anything that has been sold by Intel or AMD in the last 3 years.
For a thin client though, this might be enough computing power. A thin client really doesn't do a heck of a lot other than display simple graphics. Power consumption (and therefore heat produced) is also quite low, though a ULV mobile Celeron would offer comperable power consumption. The real reason why HP went with these chips is because they are cheap. I have to wonder why they didn't go for a VIA C3 instead though. Similar power consumption, low cost and much more widely available/better supported chipsets.
TMTA $2.39 +0.48 +25.13% 12,305,832
No you don't get it... I use mini-itx boxes in a thin client environment. Yes it is a pc but I boot them from compact flash hanging off a ide adapter. It boots in ten seconds and is totally silent(no fans) and all solid state. Did I mention the whole rig costs 240 dollars...Oh yes the power supply is sealed and the machine only burns 17 watts in this configuration.
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