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Thin Client PC Fits in Wall Socket
ukhackster writes "Last year, there was a lot of excitement about a cut-down PC that fitted into a wall socket. Next month, the Jack PC will go on sale in the UK for just £209 ($390)." From the article: "At a low price and using low power, MacLellan believes the device is 'one of the biggest developments in PCs that we have seen' and is one of the 'ever-growing range of thin clients, which are rapidly replacing PCs as a more effective desktop computing solution for modern businesses'. The Jack PC runs Windows CE, is designed to connect to 'any terminal server-based environment' and has Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP clients built in. It runs Internet Explorer 6.0 to connect to Web-driven applications, and runs an 'up to 500MHz' AMD RISC processor, which the company says is equivalent to a 1.2GHz x86. It can come with up to 64MB of flash memory and 128MB RAM."
...why do you have to plug in a DC 5v connector to the front?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
This is an interesting device, but:
advantages:
disadvantages:
I can't quite figure where this product fits. I'm guessing it's more of a business solution, but if that's true, I can't imagine it in any of the business settings I've experienced.
It's kind of cool technology, but is it a solution in search of a problem?
IOW, this is an interesting idea that will probably fail in all but a few niche applications - I wouldn't invest in the company. ;)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those on a power strip.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
are we talking Solitaire? MS Office? World of Warcraft?
D00d, they support it all: Solitaire, Spider, Spades, Minesweeper, Notepad, Telnet AND IE.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I'd love to move our office to thin clients however I really can't justify the cost. For £200 I can get a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512MB of RAM, XP Pro, a keyboard, mouse and 17" flat panel monitor.
So for a little more, I can get a tiny little box instead... wohoo!
But hold on, that box doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, or operating system. Add those on and for a typical organisation running windows, these devices work out around £200 more than a regular PC. And that's before you even look at the costs of the server you need to run all the software.
Hmm... so right now I can replace a £200 PC if I spend about £600 per user on a thin client solution... and that will save me money how exactly?
Until somebody takes a brave leap of coming up with a simple design and mass producing these the prices simply aren't even nearly competative.
So, thanks, but no thanks.
Surely the single biggest win with thin client solutions can be the ability to maintain a single boot image and just have the clients use the latest image. Unless I am missing something, that is not an option here. Given that I can get pretty compact second hand boxes for US$50 or so that work great with Linux Terminal Server, these wall socket devices seem cute but not very practical.
Here is what it says in their installation brochure:
"DC Power Jack for wall-mounted power supply, when no PoE is available and the device is to be powered externally"
They probably added this because the brochure shows how the Jack can be installed into furniture(desks), floors, or walls. It does seem funny at first glance though. Especially if you imagine patching together an outlet and a Jack that are next to eachother.
Cute toy -- but it doesn't seem practical... yet. While this seems like a decent thin-client (some of the ones I've seen come with horrid built-in displays and they still are a box -- if I'm going to have a box on my desk either way, I'd rather have it be a fast one) it's still a little too expensive. As the price comes down I can expect these to be a little more popular -- these are not the right kind of machine for everyone (or probably even most people)... but for a business I can see this working if the price came down enough.
Thin clients can definitely be useful -- if you have a powerful server you can still run high-end programs while saving costs (it is usually more cost efficient to invest in beefy servers that will serve everyone's computing needs than to buy every user a super powerful desktop [or laptop] especially from a support stance).
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Does it run Linux? If not, how long before it does?
BTW, IMO the TC mentioned is a bit pricey (but could be a great solution for the right need, is very cool and the wireless support is a serious bonus) since a standard (and still quite small) TC can be had on ebay for less then $50USD. As for CPU speed, rdp requires very, very little. Think Puppy Linux and rdesktop on a PI works fine. Thin clients are a blast to play with.
If they could just get the price below $200USD it would be great but for what it offers their price is somewhat reasonable.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
1) Any floating point operations are goign to be performed on the server
2) Type types of systems that thin clients are meant to replace don't generally deal with fp ops.
3) It is Windows CE!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Sorry, had to get that out of the way. It's the coffee talking, really.
More and more I find that I want a bunch of dumb terminals around the house. Maybe my daughter wants to play the Barbie Princess games on the web, my son wants to listen to music, or my wife wants to check e-mail. This sort of device would be great for that sort of simple stuff.
The catch, of course, is that you can buy a normal PC for much less. I picked up a nice little Dell Laptop for $400 the other day. It's wireless, has a display, and can be taken on trips. Plus there's other older computers laying around my house that are equally powerful.
Perhaps the key is to emphasize "low power". Hook it up to a battery and solar panels and deploy it as a remote monitoring device. Put it in a motor home or use it as a carputer. Still, I think you're right to think that until they find the proper niche for this hardware, it's going to be tricky selling them by the truckload.
http://www.chippc.com/resources/JackPC_Booklet.pdf
probably a version for handheld devices (without some bells, wistles, activeX, bugs from the PC-version).
but yes: Windows CE runs on MIPS (probably also ARM), as handhelds often don't use x86-chips.
From what I am reading most of us dont know what a thin client is. There is no reason a thin client actually needs an OS, and that is even contrary to what a thin client is designed to do.
Some of the later posts mention that Windows CE is a great viable option and one even went to say PXE was jsut a boot method, nothing more (what is that suposed to mean?) PXE is a great idea for thin clients, not only does it lower the required number of periphials, but it also allows for easy administration, because the thin clients would not store any settings etc, they would jsut conect to one central server.
I fear the Y2038 bug