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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."
Considering the market that they are targeting, the single largest expense is not the hardware but the software. A full version of XP Pro costs $300 and a full copy of Office 2003 costs $400. Sure, you can get volume discounts, possibly even upgrades, but considering most OEM's offer low end office PC's for the same price as a full version of 2003, you can see how the hardware isn't the biggest concern if you are aiming at the business value market. An effective API layer for Linux that supports the most common business apps could pull in more money. Also, before anyone brings it up, Crossover Office needs a bit more work and a stronger reputation before it would be considered as a common business solution.
It's like an inverted KVM switch or a thinclient for one user while the other one - the one actually seated at the machine - has real control.
This might be useful for governmental machines, like CIA or such, but I can't see it being used in schools or offices, especially if someone infects a machine with something - though it would make it a hell of a lot easier to clean half the machines.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Sharedware were doing this back in the days of Windows 95. They've since gone under and been bought out but they were also much smarter in another way - they did add in cards for generic PCs that had keyboard/mouse/video/sound on them. Unfortunately I've never been able to get anyone involved to liberate the docs to drive it in Linux
You don't have to be too old to remember departmental computers and minicomputers with timesharing that enabled 10 people, 2 of whom actually knew how to get net work done on a computer, to use one $50000 system. When did we hit bottom? This is not progress. I think these guys are re-inventing the flat tire. Wouldn't they be miles ahead to start with an OS that was multi-usr from the get-go and available with a LIceNse for Users at no eXpense?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
While you save money on the hardware, you don't on the software.
as opposed to not saving on software AND not saving on hardware? sounds like a good solution to me. besides, you're paying for a single install of winxp, not two, so that's software savings right there. and yes, sometimes windows xp is the right tool for the job and is worth paying for (like in some office environments where the workers know, want, and need windows). forcing people to use linux against their will can be just as stupid as forcing people to use windows against their will.
Even if it is cheaper, having one system go down is going to cause an inconvience for a lot more people then it would with multiple PCs. Being that some of my co-workers manage to take their system out of comission once every couple weeks I don't think I wanna share.
I'd really like to be able to do this with my G5, so my wife and I could use it at the same time. It's got the power and the ability to have multiple users simultaneously logged in - all I need is two physical consoles.
Constitutionally Correct
Note that you may need to nudge them out of the hammock first.
Sounds like life on a US Navy Submarine.. They called it "hot racking", you slept in a bunk while person B worked, then you swapped. The last of those older subs are now all decommissioned and the newer subs have enough for everyone in theory but I am sure it still happens on occasion. The step up from sharing a bunk was the bunks with equipment within arms reach, like a 4500# air bank valve actuator, a bleeder valve, or in an open area with the lights on 24/7 with someone coming by every hour and reaching over you to record a pressure gage indication.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I have been trying a few experiments on my Lan. with different systems of remote connection, realvnc, tightvnc and Remote desktop for windows Xp.
My linux pc has real multiuser capabilitys since each user gets a seperate desktop. With the majority of actual processing carried out on the superior host machine, very weak clients can be supported.
With Remotedesktop for instance I had a P166 laptop running 98 se in 48 meg of ram connected to an XP1600 pc running XP pro across a wireless lan.
The response of the 98 terminal seemed better than running applications locally with little use of the swop file. that underpowered laptop was practically reborn and almost as capable as the remote controlled XP Pc doing most of the work.
with linux a kde desktop being served (via a realvnc client) to a windows Pc ran smoothly and still allowed a local user at the linux pc but then linux is a proper muliuser environment.
The practical limitation is the bandwidth of the Lan and the power of the server Pc.
Someone said whats the point your just spliting a powerful machine in half or quarters or what ever.
thing is to run a word processor or any other number of other tasks doesn't take a huge amount of processing power a lot of the time a pc is waiting for you.
As single users we often leave tasks running in the background and hardly miss the resources on a powerful system. Sharing the CPu cycles with another user is not much worse than that.
Yes with windows program you probably do need to pay for multiuser to be legal but not so much with linux.
in a home environment do you really need to buy a top pc for everyone or run linux on 1 good one and have a few low powered boxes around the house where your family can log on and use the powerful system while dad sits on it locally reading slashdot.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
The current implementation doesn't seem to work very well, but the idea is pretty cool.
With a current workstation being much more powerful than most users really need, this isn't a bad idea.
For the office, I've built a score of AthlonXP 2500+/Nforce2 IGP machines with 512 megs of memory and all-around good, quality hardware for about $450 each. It doesn't make much sense to go for anything slower on the CPU. If I saved $30 (less than 10% of the system cost), I'd probably lose 30% of the performance. But at the same time, that's a lot more CPU than they need for IE, Excell, and Thunderbird.
It would be very cool to build similar with a gig of memory (say, $600), and let two people in the same cubicle use them. We currently have our customer-service monkies stacked two and three to a cube, so it would work out terrifically.
In fact, if it weren't for one terribly critical piece of Windows-only software, I would have long ago gone to a dual-CPU Linux machine with 8 gigs of memory, and given twenty people a dumb/thin client with which to connect to it. However, that *still* requires an extra computer on their desktop.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.