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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."
Mmmmm. That word 'luser'. I don't think it means what you think it means....
You're a public librarian. Thank god for you and your kind.
hanzie.********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Some people already referenced to distros you can use.. so I don't have to do that anymore.
:-)
.. (thank god spyware didn't exist back then, I don't want to imagine how bad it would be now :-))
But as I have some personal experience with this here's my post
Back in the day when I was studying at university a friend and I both worked a few hours a week in the uni library. They had the same problems you're describing, only on win95 then..
The computers available could be used to surf and telnet to the library system to search books.
Almost every week windows had to be re-installed,
usually because someone messed up some settings, or there was a virus on it,
In the end we just installed linux. The login screen clearly said 'log in as 'guest' with password 'guest' and would then boot X with 2 nice large icons: Netscape and a telnet window to the library catalog. Nothing else was possible.
For the next 6 months the year lasted, we didn't have to do any maintenance anymore on these systems..
(bonus for us: we used it as email server too to get personal email out of the uni-system and having a box to telnet from was nice to.. hmm.. experiment a bit)
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
there might even be one on sourceforge
OpenKiosk
Quotes from the webpage:
"OpenKiosk is an open-source multi-platform kiosk system designed for use in libraries,
"With this delivery, OpenKiosk 1.0 is finally drawing to its completion..."
I'm also hoping we'll be able to offer web access (IE and Mozilla, hopefully. IE at a minimum), Word, Excel, and Powerpoint....
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
So you don't want Windows, but you want IE, Word, Excel and Powerpoint? I think MacOS has the office programs, but unless you want to run the ancient IE5, you're SOL.
I'd personally try to push you away from supporting a lot of apps outside of just plain-jane internet access. Supporting the apps is going to be a pain in the ass, and people are going to be taking up lots of time writing term papers, etc when others just want to check their email.
I really think you need to step back and look at what you really _need_ the system to do. From the details you've provided it doesn't seem like you really have a good grasp about what you want to provide, what your maintenance requirements are, etc.
Thin client is a nice buzz-word, but it doesn't have a huge amount of meaning. Does each client have a HD, or only minimal boot-roms? What about if the central server goes down, any thin-client won't be able to restart.
Hire someone that actually can help you with these problems and analyze the requirements, do research, etc. Slashdot can provide you with very raw information, but it really sounds like you need someone with more tech experience to analyze your situation.
AccountKiller