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Thin Client Solutions For Libraries?
phatlipmojo writes "I'm a librarian in the process of opening a brand new small public library from the ground up (literally; we don't even have a building yet). The library director and I are considering our options for public computing terminals. Having experienced the frustration of dealing with Dell machines running Windows XP on a daily basis, we're trying to consider other options, and we've been talking about maybe using thin clients. Have any of you used or worked in a library (or similar environment) that uses thin client stations for public computing? What are your impressions? What are the perks and what are the drawbacks?"
"I'm hoping that using thin clients could save us daily time troubleshooting bluescreens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H computer glitches, allow us a greater degree of uniformity on the public terminals, save us the trouble and expense of putting Anti-virus software, Fortres, and Deep Freeze (or other such utilities) on each machine, and make our machines more difficult for black hat types to mess up on purpose. I'm also hoping we'll be able to offer web access (IE and Mozilla, hopefully. IE at a minimum), Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. And have floppy drives. Plus, it would really comfort me not to pump several hundred dollars per machine into a monopolist's coffers for an OS we're just going to debilitate anyway.
We're in the odd (for a public library) position of money not really being a significant factor in the decision. So, for those thin-client-lovers among you if cost weren't a factor, would you still prefer them to full-fledged PCs?
The other factor here is the tech skills required, because our IT department is me. As librarians go, I'm pretty tech-savvy, but as Slashdotters go, I'm pretty much a luser. So homebrew Linux solutions are really out (plus, vendor support is important for selling ideas like this to the municipal government), but systems requiring basic-to-intermediate networking and troubleshooting skills are in, and I'm not afraid of non-Windows OSes."
We're in the odd (for a public library) position of money not really being a significant factor in the decision. So, for those thin-client-lovers among you if cost weren't a factor, would you still prefer them to full-fledged PCs?
The other factor here is the tech skills required, because our IT department is me. As librarians go, I'm pretty tech-savvy, but as Slashdotters go, I'm pretty much a luser. So homebrew Linux solutions are really out (plus, vendor support is important for selling ideas like this to the municipal government), but systems requiring basic-to-intermediate networking and troubleshooting skills are in, and I'm not afraid of non-Windows OSes."
...just use the EZLink internet terminals from Pantheon.. if Adam west endorses it.. it must be good!!! :(
phatlipmojo writes "I'm a librarian ..."
Funny. When I was a kid librarians were named Ann, Phyllis, or Doris.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
If you're looking for thin clients at the library, I'd suggest keeping lending lots of books on diet and exercise.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
The Sun computers look very sharp, are very small and are all accompanied by a LCD display. They run some sort of Linux-Unix like OS.
;-)
I'm waiting for that guy posting all the pro-Sun stuff to see this and gag.
May we never see th
I agree totally. Emacs is the perfect choice. Surely in this day and age everybody ought to know at least the basics like C-x C-f, C-x C-s etc. Web surfing can be done easily through w3m and as for mail users can bring their own .gnus files.
As you mention, emacs does need quite a heavy box to run though, but you can gain better performance if you run emacs in a nice 80x25 terminal.
Oh hush. We all know that Windows stopped advancing in 1996 and that it has no way to do anything useful like lock things down, provide useful commandline utilities, etc.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Indeed, they is hardly any more confusing than the second-person pronoun you, which is both singular and plural. The singular they is already an accepted usage in informal settings, and I have little doubt that it will eventually become legitimate for even scholarly usage in America.
Of course, this means that here in the South we will begin using they as strictly singular with the prefered third-person plural being th'all.
I'd like to take a moment to bring up my proposal from back in the day for a new, all-purpose pronoun to use when ambiguity rears its ugly head. Or is that his ugly head? Her?
Anyway, recognizing that everyone is very sensitive about these things, I decided to combine three common pronouns, she, he, and it.
My proposal for a new, generic pronoun:
s/h/it.
Face it, it makes as much sense as the other choices.