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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."
Ditto.
Where I work, we install thin client solutions as often as the user's apps will allow us. From just a few in an office to hundreds spread across the entire city, from 1 server when they could not afford redundancy to as many as needed for the client load. I think I can say that we think they are a good idea.
My suggestion: get 2 high end servers and put win2k3 on them, with load balancing and terminal services licenceses. Then just pick up any Win Terminal that anyone makes. We've found the Wyse hardware often failed on us a few years back, so we currently go with Neoware, but if you want a brand name, try IBM(made by neoware) or Compaq/HP(I used to work for them).
The configuration of the server will need someone who knows what they are doing, and they are out there. The thin clients take all of 30 seconds to setup. If your tech knows what he is doing he will have the terminal logins so locked down that it will take a lot of work to break, and he will have a backup image of the drives so that when it does break, he can get it up and running quickly.
Anyway...
Enjoy!
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
How about: "Someone across the street bought a newspaper, and then put it over their head so that their hair wouldn't get wet."