Your feedback is much appreciated

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi again,

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, ramonsagullo at yahoo.com wrote:

> 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?

I agree with Kai on this.  OpenOffice and firefox are examples of very good
thin client application.  They need no special access to local devices
(scanners, webcams, ...) and don't refresh the screen often (a few times
per second at most) so there is quite small network usage.  Compare that
with running full screen DVD playing.  The entire screen refreshes some 30
or 60 times per second in 24-bit colour and sound must be sent across the
network too.  

Actually, once one user runs OpenOffice on the server, the other users
should often be able to open it more quickly as it gets cached in memory.

> 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.

Practically all ethernet cards tend to work fine.  You must be more careful
with wireless though.  

I suspect webcams may be a problem in two ways, you need to choose ones
that work well on linux and I don't know of a way to make them work with
thin clients.  Consider a user running skype on the server with a USB
webcam on the client.  There would need to be some way for Skype on the
server to see the webcam on the thin client.  That's not trivial.  This
could a use case for a thick client.

> 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.

Costs I'd look at:

 - maintenance costs (man-power/skills needed to maintain one server and
   some dumb thin clients vs many desktops)
 - hardware costs (thin clients are relatively inexpensive and last a long
   time, hard disks are perhaps the most common cause of failure of a computer)
 - power costs (server + clients vs server + desktops)
 - software license costs (windows, ms office, adobe photoshop, anti-virus,
   ...)

Gavin