Re: To PC or not

Like Dan, I've seen thin client at work at Sun Microsystems when they were a client of the consulting firm I worked for. It was indeed reliable and robust and fit Sun's flexible workgroup culture. Sit at any workstation, at work or at home, and pull up your own ‘desktop’ with access to whatever resource you use. Sun uses thin client because it fits their working culture – and because they sell servers and thin client technology – and cost savings are likely a much smaller consideration.

Server management is also a core competency at Sun. Non-tech businesses often find limited tangible payoff with thin client. Many organizations find they’ve shifted costs and maintenance burdens without getting a net improvement in either. There are advantages for information security, because files aren’t stored locally – so there’s less risk that, say, thousands of new hire records will be lost on a laptop. And there’s less chance someone will strip a machine to sell the parts. If we're concerned primarily about security or loss/theft, thin client might be a plus... but for TCO and lower costs, we might be disappointed.

PCs, even laptops, are cheap enough now that you can get the same effect (in terms of management) by buying PCs, burning a standard configuration, locking things down reasonably, using standard app's, using centralized storage servers, and pushing out patches and updates rather than thin clients. I’d lean to using PCs as if they were thin clients -- avoid storing files locally and, if a PC goes bad, issue a new one and re-burn the old one with a fresh image -- but sticking with an XP client and whatever local app's you need. Except for purchasing cheap PCs, LPS uses most of these strategies already.

Re: To PC or not

A few points about PCs in the classroom: To my knowledge thin client technology would not support dedicated hardware like smartboards in a classroom. (Smart boards work with Macs and PCs and there is a Linux client too, although the version lags the most recent versions for the other two platforms).

Being a computer coach at a Middle School I see the 'extra' software teachers commonly place on their classroom PCs. In our environment teachers use software that accompanies text books from Prentice Hall and other publishers. These are legitimate tools that our staff use to accompany the basic suite of MS Office+Browser found on all LPS desktops. The 'suite' of software may be completely different from say a 6th grade Language Arts teacher to what a 8th grade science teacher uses, and everything in between. Occasionally teachers will strike out on their own and purchase/use software that others don't use. As long as software licensing is legitimate I support them. Embracing the blend of software found on a classroom PC can be challenging at times, but if it helps our teachers in their job then great.

United Streaming: Our teachers are slowly downloading a unique set of clips and accompanying items for the units they teach. They are saving them to their local harddrive and playing them from there. (To save their work they are encouraged to burn/backup a copy to a CD once they've compiled a large enough chunk of material). Their local hardrives which once seemed huge are actually being used to their full potential.

Having said all that, there may be a subset of the user community where thin client technology applies: Thin client technology may be a good solution for administrative staff (e.g. bookeepers, counselors, ESC administrators and the like), but keep them out of the classroom.

I have used Unix with X-Terminals and that works well if everyone uses the same apps and there's a need to control change - like an entire engineering department working on common projects.

I have also administrered and used Citrix-Winframe extensively in the past. It works great - even half-way around the world. A few programs that need things like audio didn't always operate properly on the client, but for many applications it can actually work better than using the app locally. With either solution there exists the advantage of storing documents on a central server and reduced/shared software licensing.

Moving to a thin client for any user would not be popular. People still view the "personal" in PC as something they own. That's a hard culture shift to change. A possible way to introduce thin client technology is to allow access to "My Documents" from home using a Winframe client.