Gavin, thanks for all the advice, it is immensly helpful. I actually started rolling out an edubuntu lab earlier this year and it became painfully clear early on that the server I have (3.0 GHz P4 Dell with 4GB Dual Channel DDR RAM) was not going to be adequate to handle all the thin clients. I have since dedicated my efforts towards setting up MiniLANs in each teacher's classroom with the P4 servers handling just 3 to 6 thin clients. This seems to be working alright, although things are still pretty slow. At least I don't have to worry about viruses any more though. To answer your question about software, my current curriculum for grades K-8 includes: OpenOffice Impress, Writer, Calc, Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, kturtle, Kompozer, Tuxtyping, Tuxpaint, and various Web 2.0 apps like Google Docs, <a href="http://Bubbl.us">Bubbl.us</a> and Blogger. I was hoping to use Kino and Blender with the middle schoolers at some point in the future, but it isn't a big deal to postpone those plans if need be. Here's a few final questions if you don't mind. In my current lab if I try to run more than about 7 thin clients they freeze up just playing flash games or running tuxtyping. Like I said, I have 4GB of Dual Channel DDR RAM so is the bottleneck with my 10/100 switch or my P4 CPU? Until now I've thought it was the CPU because when I look at the system monitor the CPU maxes out pretty quick. (maybe I should bring my c2d in from home and try it out to see how it holds up) If I want to use the above programs and keep my current curriculum will a single server with 2 dual core xeons and 8 GB RAM be fast or just adequate? I want the lab to be fast. (obviously I'm just asking your opinion here) Finally, what kind of switch should I get? Should I go all gigabit or is it enough to just be gigabit to the server and 10/100 to the clients? I do a lot of flash based reading games and stuff with the lower grades like <a href="http://starfall.com">starfall.com</a> and so I absolutely must have these activities perform well. Thanks again Gavin, you've been extremely helpful. -joe