Your feedback is much appreciated

[ramonsagullo at yahoo.com]

These are valuable info and considerably guiding me in the right direction in "stitching" together our new lab.  

Kindly correct me if I am wrong: so If our students will be using OpenOffice as an example, I have to go with a thick client? Or, is it possible for the diskless thin client, with the kids using their thumb drives, to run OpenOffice, and just save their work in the server?

The current lab we have are using Windows; this licensed OS came with aging desktops. It is a mix of XP and 98SE.  We have an existing "server" that came with XP Pro.  I was brought in to help minimize the overall cost - hardware, software and power consumption, while still being able to stay true to the vision-mission of the school.  I have touched FOSS, and I am comfortable enough with it.  I gave a Live-CD of Edubuntu to the existing instructors we have a couple of months ago, so they can familiarize with it.

One advantage I have is, the new lab will be from scratch. Of course the other priceless advantage I have, is this sort of cooperative community.

Aside from getting a decent switch, are there brands out there that are "unfriendly" to Ubuntu? Locally, we have Linksys, D-Link, Zyxel and 3COM.

I will be presenting my "packaged idea" to the Board of Trustees first week of August.  Their primary concern of course, is the cost. So, I am focusing my presentation on that. Mine is to find the balance between 3 factors: direct benefits to the students' learning experience; 2nd would be less headache for me, and of course, the cost.

Best regards,

Mon
 
 
----- Original Message ----
From: Todd O'Bryan <toddobryan at mac.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 10:33:26 AM

On Sat, 2007-06-16 at 16:38 -0700, ramonsagullo at yahoo.com wrote:
> I could use more tutoring on the salient differences between a
> "diskless thick client" and "diskless thin client."

A thin client is basically a video device that allows you to see what is
running on a server. With thin clients, all of the processing occurs on
the server, the video is sent over the network and simply displayed by
the client. Above a certain point, extra power in a thin client is just
wasted. The nice thing about thin clients is that you can upgrade a
whole lab just by upgrading the server. Also thin clients tend to have
effective lifetimes of several years because they have few, if any,
moving parts and don't need more processing power as applications become
more intensive.

A diskless thick client is a computer that downloads its operating
system and applications from a central server, but runs the applications
itself. The major advantage is that, because the applications are run
locally, not on the server, one server can accommodate many more
clients. Also, video doesn't need to be sent down to each client, so the
network demands are considerably smaller than with thin clients. The
major disadvantage is that the client must be powerful enough to run the
applications--considerably more powerful than a typical thin client.
Thick clients also tend to have shorter life expectancies than thin
clients, because they must be upgraded to keep up with the increasing
demands of more complicated software. On the other hand, having a really
powerful server with thick clients isn't as important as long as it has
relatively quick disk access.

HTH,
Todd








       
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