Jetway PT800TWIN - Dual User Hardware

Steve K writes "Cost-cutting in IT. Something the beancounters are always looking at, no doubt. Jetway have attempted to provide an answer -- allow two users to utilise one machine at once. HEXUS.net have a review: 'The PT800TWIN is an odd beast. While it's admirable that Jetway have engineered it with MagicTwin support in mind, to go after the low-cost/budget/TCO crowd, you have to wonder about the implementation. It needs Windows XP, adding cost. A large proportion of applications released on Windows require you to have two licenses to run concurrently on a MagicTwin system, adding cost. While you save money on the hardware, you don't on the software.' Not really a revolutionary product, but perhaps it can be taken somewhere with a little more work."

Comments

What the heck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just buy a damn server and attach dumbterminals then?

All this thing is really is a scaled down version of time sharing systems that have been around since the 1950's.

Oh well, I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.

Two users? One machine at once?

[Apreche]

Um. You know, if you get a computer with two video cards, two keyboards, two mice and two monitors you can do with with X rather easily. Heck, if you don't mind the performance hit you can technically get a whole bunch of terminals hooked up to one machine like this. You're really not saving that much money though. Commodity PC hardware is so cheap these days that is just doesn't matter that much.

Re:Two users? One machine at once?

[Lumpy]

Heck, if you don't mind the performance hit you can technically get a whole bunch of terminals hooked up to one machine like this.

it's not much of a performance hit. An old Dual P-III 866 can easily handle 10 users on diskless LTSP terminals and still have enough performance to get users mentioning how "responsive" it is.

Who care's about hardware cost. I can maintain one computer for my church instead of maintaining 10 of them. my weekly "free" It time is the 45 minutes between Church service and when my daughter get's out of Sunday School.

ever Cince I switched the church to Linux they have had zero downtime, zero viruses, and most importantly zero system screw-up's by the "computer experts" in the congregation that think adding things from help the church.

Now they are 100% legal, the secretary can not screw up her computer by reinstalling webshots and claria again for the 37th time after being told not to. AND they have internet access on all machines instead of just one.

They got more, more performance from older out-dated hardware and I dont spend more than a few minutes a week on it.

Companies would kill for that, check that, companies ARE killing for that. WE already have 20 users on a LTSP arrangement at work.

Why?

[FiReaNGeL]

Why choose to buy one very performing desktop to split his performance in half, instead of buying 2 cheap desktops? Performing hardware is always more costly than twice its underperforming counterpart...

Also, twice the applications running, twice the opportunity to crash...?