[H-GEN] Thin client options in 2014

[Paul Gear]

On 02/06/2014 09:59 PM, Gary Curtis wrote:
> ...
> Any wholesale move to cloud based systems fills management with dread.

Any wholesale move to cloud ought to fill every self-respecting geek 
with several times more dread.


On 02/06/2014 10:18 PM, Mark Ellem wrote:
> Adding to this, Intel have a new generation of NUC (Next Unit of 
> Computing) which are moderately specced PC's un 12cmx12cmx4cm boxes 
> that start at ~$200.
>
> Combined with a monitor and KB/mouse these would be ideal as thin 
> clients. They even VESA mount for added space saving.
>
> Mark. 

+1 to the NUCs - they are capable little boxes and very tough.  We use 
them for all our "desktops".  (We're gonna have to rename those things 
to "monitorbacks" - doesn't quite have the same ring, does it? ;-) )  To 
get a usable desktop you need to spend a lot more then $200, but for a 
thin client, maybe not.

I don't know if you can buy them without a Windows license, though. At 
the moment, we still run a full Windows instance on them, but we 
deployed them knowing that we could repurpose them as thin clients with 
very little effort.  If we went that way, we'd probably run ThinStation 
and plumb them through to a Windows terminal server that looks virtually 
the same as a local Windows desktop, but you could probably use your 
existing Ubuntu server, or pull down a diskless OS and run over NFS.

Paul