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HP Shows Off Power Over Ethernet Thin Client

Posted by timothy on from the do-not-taunt-happy-thin-client dept.

angry tapir writes "HP has unveiled an all-in-one thin client capable of being powered by an Ethernet cable. The t410 AiO supports the Type 1 Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard, which means it is capable of drawing its power from a network connection, although it can be powered by standard AC power. It uses an ARM-based processor and has an integrated 18.5-inch monitor, and it is capable of being used for virtual desktops through Windows RDP, VMware View and Citrix ICA."

28 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Back, to the Future... by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have you seen a PoE terminal before? I think that was the point of this one...

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  2. Forget web browsing by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Video replay (with sound) and flash apps have become such an integral part of the web that few people would be satisfied with a thin client running any of these protocols. The truism that Average Joes only run lightweight apps is no longer true.

    1. Re:Forget web browsing by isopropanol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But for point of sale, front counter, and callcentre work it'll be just fine.

    2. Re:Forget web browsing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It supports VMware View (PCoIP) and Citrix ICA.
      Both of these natively support Flash/Video just fine (I'm playing a 720P Youtube Video in my VMware View session right now...)

    3. Re:Forget web browsing by tom17 · · Score: 2

      We are about to migrate to a VDI infrastructure. My team is scared, as the 'standard' terminals are the RDP-Only Wyse jobbies. But there is an option that we may get the PCoIP ones. I saw a demo and that is less scary.

      How have you found it so far? Sounds like video is OK so that's a relief...

    4. Re:Forget web browsing by timeOday · · Score: 2

      I am interested. Does a 15W PoE client have the juice to decrypt and decompress a fullscreen, full-resolution video display? What sort of server horsepower is necessary to transcode the youtube video from the flash compression to the client/server encoding in real time?

    5. Re:Forget web browsing by aix+tom · · Score: 2

      s/use/buys/

      The average Joes and Janes in our shops and work floors *use* them all the time. They have no clue what that small magic black box actually is, and how it's different from their kids stuff back home, but they use it just fine. ;-)

  3. Plenty of great uses for this by jimmyswimmy · · Score: 2

    Receptionists, POS terminals, all kinds of good uses. This is the way I set up my computers at home - good desktop, cheap laptop with RDP. I could use one. Unfortunately no idea of the price. At $200 these will sell like crazy. At $400, may as well just get a big netbook. Knowing HP, they'll sell at $450.

    --

    Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
  4. Yawn by Bazman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wake me up when it can do power over wireless ethernet.

    1. Re:Yawn by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2

      http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/wec.shtml

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  5. Re:How long... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    more important, how long until someone makes a wireless version of it?

  6. The Takeaway by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The takeaway from the article:

    ... which drops to 10/100 when using PoE, thereby making it only marginally useful for very thin applications.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    1. Re:The Takeaway by LoudMusic · · Score: 4, Informative

      If it's a thin client doing RDP or such the speed to the thin client is negligible. I use RDP clients over 2mbit internet connections nearly everyday and it works fine - even with the increased latency. Keep in mind all the file access and disk I/O is taking place on the RDP server, not the thin client. The only data going to and from the thin client is information about how to render the video output. You could even use Photoshop effectively through this.

      --
      No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    2. Re:The Takeaway by geekmux · · Score: 2

      The takeaway from the article: ... which drops to 10/100 when using PoE, thereby making it only marginally useful for very thin applications.

      Marginally useful at 100MB? Uh, since this is a terminal primarily designed to run thin applications (RDP, Citrix) which were developed and can be optimized to run over dial-up, I'm failing to see your point here. Even negotiating at 10MB I doubt you would see an impact in an RDP session.

    3. Re:The Takeaway by LoudMusic · · Score: 2

      Absolutely. Some of the RDP connections I make are over 256kbit VSAT connections with greater than five seconds of latency at times. Drop the resolution and color depth and it's usable. But I what I'm saying is that from my experience 2mbit and reasonable latency of 100ms RDP can *seem* like using a 'local OS'. Maybe just a bit sluggish PC ;) But in turn, some aspects can be far superior. Like disk I/O, for example, if you are running an RDP session on a 32 core system with SAN access and want to compress a 3GB folder into a ZIP file, it'll happen a bit quicker than if you were trying to do the same thing on even a fantastic local PC. And 100 users could all be working on that RDP server at the same time. At which point it starts to become really financially beneficial to use this arrangement.

      Honestly the only gripe I see with their specs is the relatively low resolution display. My primary display is 23" 1920x1080 and it bugs the shit out of me. Spreadsheets need more pixels. Configuration windows also need more room.

      --
      No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    4. Re:The Takeaway by drsmithy · · Score: 2

      You appear to be arguing that enabling POE renders the networking connection "marginally useful", or "less useful" because of a speed drop from 1Gb to 100Mb.

      In the typical corporate environment, 100Mb is more than adequate even for a regular managed desktop PC, let alone a thin client. For nearly all thin client use cases, even 10Mb is quite adequate.

      Or, to put it another way, your assertion is wrong. In a typical corporate environment, a 100Mb network with POE is almost certainly going to be *more useful* than a 1Gb network without POE.

    5. Re:The Takeaway by drsmithy · · Score: 2

      First, show me where I said anything about a typical corporate environment.

      That would be the part where you're making a sweeping, generalised judgement call. It seems reasonable to assume one of the most common scenarios would be encompassed.

      Yeah. I'm funny like that. I think an order of magnitude increase in bandwidth has the capability to be more useful, and conversely an order of magnitude less could be considered "less useful." If 100Mb wasn't "less useful" there wouldn't be a 1 Gigabit standard.

      However, this difference does not happen in isolation. You are trading off bandwidth against POE.

      Ultimately, the question becomes: is 1Gb more useful or is POE more useful ? My answer is that in most common corporate environments, POE will be considered more useful because 1Gb is largely unnecessary.

      I'll try to put it in a way you can understand. With Gigabit it has potential to do real computing ... e.g. boot Linux with PXE and access a data store in a NAS, for example.

      100Mb is quite adequate for this.

      I don't care what it was designed for, nor did I claim that their design decisions were unsound. The whole point, which you are working so hard to not get (perhaps because you are too busy putting words in my mouth) is that anyone who had an idea of using this in some very cool applications with visions of high performance networking at their disposal and powering it with PoE is SOL.

      Your original comment in this thread was: "... which drops to 10/100 when using PoE, thereby making it only marginally useful for very thin applications."

      Which is patently false. 100Mb is not only very useful for just about anything anyone would want to do with a thin client, it's also quite adequate even for normal, managed desktop PCs booting from local disk and accessing data off the network. It's even adequate for thick clients booting over the network, as evidenced by all the places that not only did it before they could get gigabit, but continued to do it for years afterwards.

      Fundamentally, the marginal utility of 1Gb over 100Mb for most end-user computing scenarios is very small. I know of several companies that have, within the last five years, replaced their entire office networks (multiple floors in multiple buildings, thousands of endpoints) and chosen to stay at 100Mb for ~95% of endpoints because no benefit (to justify the additional cost) was perceived in going to 1Gb.

      Obviously HP put Gigabit capability in there for a reason (you did know that companies count every penny and add up the cost of the BOM, right?)

      1Gb adds SFA to the cost of the end user device. It adds _shitloads_ to the cost of the networking infrastructure to support thousands of those devices.

  7. Re:Late to the game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... except the JackPC doesn't power the monitor. HP's new thin client does.

    What this means is that a thin client can be connected and powered using a single cable. Why bother with a thin client that is PoE if you still had to power a monitor?

    I say "Bravo" to HP for the achievement.

  8. Re:Back, to the Future... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No. The entire thing with this product is that it supports PoE, not that it is a thin client.
    Saying that we had the same thing before would be like saying "Didn't we have that in the 1890's" when someone shows up with a flying car just because it's also a car.

    What is neat here is that they have reduced the power consumption to less than 13W to be able to run it on PoE.

    Removing the need to install power-cables in a class-room or similiar is pretty nice.

  9. Re:How long... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

    On HP's x86 thin client line, 'hacking' has historically been pretty trivial. They totally don't support doing this; but it's just a normal PC bios with a disk-on-chip as the default boot medium; but it won't blink if you ask it to PXE boot or boot from a USB device.

    Also of note, their non-WinCE clients have, historically, run a badly butchered version of debian(and, unless they've finally decided to fix the problem, several years later, one that has amazingly trivial exploits to get to a root shell even in 'kiosk' mode, much less in admin mode). I don't know if they've played bootloader games with their ARM models or not; but unless they've tightened the hell out of their linux firmware I strongly suspect that at least the non-kiosk mode will still have a way to sneak into the guts of the stock image. Also, since they tend to support running a browser locally(either WinCE's delightful IE build, or a slightly elderly version of Firefox, I'm assuming that X11 is already set to go, for local use, in the stock firmware.

    I'd give it "about as long as it takes for one to get on ebay". HP's prices for thin clients are...optimistic... given their hardware specs; but you can find them at pleasingly low prices once they get shuffled off to support-contract-expired corporate retirement land. They make decent little mini-PCs for the price.

  10. Awesome! by twmcneil · · Score: 2

    This will be really great for all those places where there is an ethernet cable but no electrical power available. Just think of the possibilities!

    Uh, no. I can't think of any either.

    --
    "The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
  11. Re:Back, to the Future... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not if you wanted to setup a call center with 400 desks you would not. That is what this is for.

  12. Re:Back, to the Future... by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And they eliminate 50% of your IT staff needs. no more dealing with workstations and idiot users, I can replace a failed thin client in 35 seconds and the user has no loss of data or any workflow interruption.

    a general office is dumb to buy desktop PC's anymore. Thin clients for the sales, marketing, accounting, and general office, workstations for the people that actually use computers and you are done. Spend the money in the back office.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  13. Re:Back, to the Future... by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 2

    Typical cube farm - think Wal-Mart filled with cubicals. Overhead lighting, nothing local. It would discourage people from the "I'll plug my phone in at work" mentality.

    Perfect for the typical call center.

  14. Re:Back, to the Future... by bugs2squash · · Score: 2

    It would be nice to have better options for LAN over standard power wiring. I know options exist but they've never seemed that attractive for one reason or another.

    --
    Nullius in verba
  15. Re:Back, to the Future... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Funny

    What happens if you put a PoE device on each end of the cable? Free energy...?

    --
    No sig today...
  16. Re:Raspberry Pi by BertieBaggio · · Score: 3, Funny

    I didn't read your question, but bananas.

    --
    If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
  17. Re:Back, to the Future... by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hear it also has less space than a Nomad.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."