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

A Novel Concept but…

[Izago909]

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.

Re:A Novel Concept but…

[Waffle Iron]

Then how is this different than multiple user profiles in XP, OSX, or Linux?

It's different because the users are supposed to use the machine simultaneously. It comes with a book explaining the arts of Pair Data Entry and of Extreme Clericing.

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.

So basically...

[Tuxedo Jack]

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.

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?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yeah, but think of the pr0n possibilities. It's like a gang-bang for your desktop.

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.

Use Linux systems instead, like this

[vinsci]

Linux Multi-Head: Share a single CPU and RAM among 2 two 16 users, each having their own screens, keyboards, mice etc.

This was also discussed on Slashdot a short while ago: FourHead: One PC, Four Users

Why stop there?

[FunWithHeadlines]

Hey, if we're going to cut costs let's go all out:

"ATTENTION STAFF: From now on all developers will share a Jetway PT800TWIIN workstation. You can both log in to the same machine, thereby saving us hardware costs. A cost savings that you can imagine will get passed back to you in higher salaries, but there you would be wrong. Think executive bonuses for coming up with this idea in the first place.

In a further cost-cutting move, both developers sharing their PT800TWIN workstation will also share the same ergonomic chair. By getting our cleaning service personnel to sretch out your chairs in the off hours, we have found that two moderately overweight programmers can now fit into the same chair. Note the 'moderately' part. From now on all snacks from the kitchen will be removed to encourage proper weight maintenance...and to save costs.

Futher, you'll be happy to hear, we are discontinuing the practice of commuting. Both developers will now share their cubicles with two other developers in a shared work/sleep arrangement. You will work 12 hours, then utilize the new company-issued hammocks with corporate logo and mini pillows to sleep for 12 hours. During those sleep twelve hours, the other two developers will squeeze into the one chair to continue work. Note that you may need to nudge them out of the hammock first, as there will only be one hammock issued for each four developers.

We know you will appreciate the cost-cutting moves that will help yield higher profits and will be a boon to the executive V.P.s who thought of this move after reading an article in Forbes that called this the next big thing in business. You can thank the V.P. personally when he comes back from his 3-month trip to Fiji paid for by the bonus he received from suggesting this approach. Please join me in thanking him. And get back to 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...?

Re:Why?

[mabhatter654]

performance doesn't really cut in half...after all, most people spend 75% of their time reading or typing, not aranging windows...that means the second person is using resources "just sitting there" anyway. The chances 2 people are going to load large apps at the same time really doesn't come up that often.

Of course windows is horrible about program usage...it tries to open new copies of programs in ram every time you start another... again, the design of Linux proves much better for this situation!

Very old in fact

[Alan Cox]

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

re-inventing the wheel?

[museumpeace]

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?

But in 10 years hardware will be free

[aardwolf204]

And considering that in 10 years the hardware will be free this doesnt look like such a great investment.

Stateless Linux anyone?

savings!

[pchan-]

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.

Re:Anyone remember Citrix?

[Mike Buddha]

If you don't hear about Citrix anymore, then you don't deal with enterprise level software deployments. Citrix is HUGE in the big leagues. You'll find it everywhere in Hospital systems, and anywhere security is a high priority. It's used primarily for its VPN-like features.

Remote Vnc instead.

[blackest_k]

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.

Very cool....

[NerveGas]

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