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Microsoft to Release a Thin-Client Windows XP
repking writes "I'm reading on Brian Madden's Thin Client Web that Microsoft is about to release (don't know exactly when) two new versions of Windows XP targeting the thin-client market (This products ARE NOT the Lite XP versions that Microsoft is about to release on certain countries like Brazil). Codenamed Eiger and Mönch, these two new releases would let you 'convert' old PC into thin-client Devices. Is Microsoft trying to compete with open source projects like PXES or ThinStation?"
As a sysadmin for a small buisness (~100 employees and growing fast) I've been trying to push thin-clients for a while now. My manager and the other sysadmin is very reluctant to pursue this solution but I cannot find any reason why a recpetionist, data entry, or accounting needs a new, full featured desktop. Thin-clients are rising in popularity again and it won't be long for them to become a familar site in small to large buisnesses. The only reason I can find to purchase Microsoft's XP thin-client is for those of us who would use it with terminal services. Terminal server requires a license for each connecting client, which a Windows OS has. One of the arguments I've heard against thin clients is the licensing fees for terminal service. Why purchase a $200 thin client and then a CAL license[1]when you can purchase a $400 full fledge desktop with XP? If my manager wasn't so strong against Office alternatives[2] a Linux server with OO.org would save the company a fortune. We wouldn't have to worry about costly maintenance[3] or extradanory licensing fees with an OSS thin-client.
[1] can't recall how much a CAL costs
[2] we're a government contractor and worried about compatibility
[3] defrag, spyware, updates, corruption, etc
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Finally, we'll be able to centralize spyware/worm/virus infections on the server, where they belong!
people can still get the image from
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~spotter/floppy.bin
though I give no warrenties for it still working, as haven't looked at it in years (and probably needs to be manually setup once it boots). though I recall it working well enough to get me an A on the project it was for.
the idea was that this floppy would give you a full screen X (via tiny X's Xvesa) and you'd run rdesktop full screen on top of it.
Sure they don't work with sucky servers and networks, but with grunty servers, networks and reasonable software thet can work fine.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
But this time microsoft is bringing innovation...
University of Washington
Student
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
A Windows 'Lite' (as in low resource usage, not crippled) would be perfect for many corporate environments where most users do not need or want the feature bloat present in normal versions of Windows. If this product helps companies get another couple of years out of their current workstations then I imagine this could be pretty popular.
I don't see that this would go down very well with hardware companies though. I had always thought that there was some sort of conspiracy/cartel in place whereby the big software companies constantly bloated their products in order to drive sales of hardware. This could shake things up a bit...
I love how the OS community assumes it's always about them. In the thin client arena, Microsoft's main competition is Citrix Metaframe. My company sells a solution that works on both citrix and terminal services. Citrix is more expensive but has more features. There are also a ton of addons and configurations that TS doesn't do yet.
The more options MS comes up with, the more they can compete. So far our customers are buying more TS Licenses than Citrix since windows 2000 came out because it's adequate for most users who want a reasonably functional thin client solution.
Yes, thin client options on Linux are a threat, but that's just lumped into the over all Linux beast they are tackling right now and specifically isn't anything special... yet.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Because according to Microsoft, that's all the PC you're using to read this is good for - because it won't run Longhorn.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"Is Microsoft trying to compete with open source projects like PXES or ThinStation?"
.net framework more widely, so people will actually start to develop for it. They fear people will never deliberately download and try to install it on their older boxes without something like this.
No. Microsoft never heard of PXES or ThinStation. They are absolutely desperate to deploy the
Be interesting to see how this works out for them. I won't lose sleep over it.
This is very likely in response not just to Citrix but to Sun's SunRay technology which is the ultimate thinclient - there is no OS on a SunRay it is basically a remote keyboard/mouse/usb hub/audio/framebuffer-display all hanging off a network interface.
SunRay is very heavily used in US Military applications because they really like the zero state on the desktop and no ability for state to be put there. It is even used with Trusted Solaris (which provides Mandatory Access Controls), to access Citrix services.
SunRay also has very simple and very effective desktop mobility, pull out smartcard move to new SunRay unit plug in card, reauthenticate, and off you go.
SunRay however does require dedicated Sun specific hardware, but that hardware is pretty cheap.
While not as nice as real thin clients, old junk machines can easily be made to be reliable with an LTSP network.
:)
You can get a good bootable NIC for 20 bucks, remove local devices (hard drive, floppy, cdrom) and you have a pretty reliable machine.
Sure the CPU fan or the power supply can go out on your dumpster pentium 166s, but its not like you can't just take the NIC and put it in another junk machine.
I've outfitted a school with 60 workstations that my company has thrown away. Pentium 133s - P2 350s.
LTSP, specifically K12LTSP has been the perfect solution.
Save your money for network infrastructure, flat panel screens, and internet
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
How many times must hitory repeat itself?
1 - Diskless Workstations
2 - X-terminals
3 - Network Computers
None ever saw widespread popularity.
I've run networks of literally thousands of the first two (I'll agree NCs never really took off, as they were neither fish nor fowl - running limited applications locally, but without enough power to do it well...)
XTerms and Diskless workstations (to a lesser degree) are by far the most effective, consistent, cost-effective, and easy-to-manage computing environment I've ever run across. (And I have worked for a company that had only a dozen or so Unix Administrators supporting several thousand users in a business unit that generated a billion dollars on the bottom line. Over half of those users were on high-performance NCD or Tektronix X-terms.)
The concept has a LOT of merit. There's really no question that it's the optimal way to set things up from a minimal managment point of view. (I've also been on the corporate staff of the world's largest vendor of remote managment solutions, and no, there's no managment tool or framework on the planet that can achieve the same leverage you can get through a well-designed X-Term deployment.)
I'm convinced that if MIT hadn't abandoned X, but continued to develop it for multimedia support, Windows XP might never have gotten where it is. To a sad but somewhat true degree, it may have been the lack of MP3 playing ability that doomed the X-term approach...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Not anymore, it doesn't. SunRay server software is now available for Linux, as well. So you can run a *cheap* SunRay lab. Get some SunRays off eBay, buy the server software (it's kinda spendy, but cheaper than the Sun hardware), and run a couple of dozen SunRays off a single server.
They are really nice machines. Fanless. And their software is getting very capable. You can even mount USB pen drives off the back of them.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Answer: Total Cost of Operation
If you have a screen, CPU, RAM, and a NIC, you will not be wasting time extensively debugging problems, running viruses scans on each machine, etc. Less points of hardware failure. The logical bugs can come from only one place, the server. Its a matter of competence to make sure your servers are redundant, reliable, virus and bug free.
You would probably avoid running a thin client on a full blown PC. You sort of add another point of failure. The other problem is that I haven't seen any Microsoft based platform that matches the concept seamlessly. Unlike *ahem* unix/linux....
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I've been (for the most part) responsible for the implementation
of the second larget thin-client rollout in my country. In fact,
I'm still in that position, since we still have two whole buildings
left to migrate.
The average box in this company is a Pentium II, 333Mhz, with 64MB of RAM
with Trident PCI VGA.
They are way too slow to run a modern desktop (before we started the
thin client rollout, they were mostly running their original Windows 95
installation), but they are fast enough to run Xfree 4.3 with accelerated
2D Trident drivers. They run *beautifully*. The large amount or RAM
let's us add small webservers and telnet servers to the thin client disk
images, and a Samba nmbd process so they have a NetBIOS name. We are using
Terminal services on a Windows 2003 Server to provide a modern and relatively
secure OS.
So far, the absolutely biggest complaint we have ever had is that Office
2003 does not include the "Office shortcut bar" (boo-f*ng-hoo) so we ended
up installing the damn bar from an Office XP CD we had lying around.
The users are happy with their "new computers". They crash a lot less, Word
and Excel open instantly, and if power goes out or the machine breaks, their
whole session is intact. Help Desk is a lot easier now: When a thin client
craps out, the techies just dump it and plug another one in, turn it on,
and the user keeps on working as if nothing happened.
locked down? yes, they are. Very. But in this particular company there are
nearly no "power users" and they barely even notice things the lack of a
wallpaper. They just power it up and use it to work.