Where Are the Cheap Thin Clients? 349
Darren Ginter writes "I find many aspects of desktop virtualization compelling, with one exception: the cost of the thin clients, which typically exceeds that of a traditional box. I understand all of the benefits of desktop virtualization (and the downsides, thanks) but I'm very hung up on spending more for less. While there are some sub-$200 products out there, they all seem to cut corners (give me non-vaporware that will drive a 22" LCD at full resolution). I can PXE boot a homebrew Atom-based thin client for $130, but I'd prefer to be able to buy something assembled. Am I missing something here?"
economies of scale (Score:3, Informative)
All these costs are largely independent of the number of units produced, yet must be recouped from their sales. By buying a dedicated thin client, you have to bear your share of the product development. Since thin clients sell far fewer units than PCs these costs are higher.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm struggling to find the connection there ...
The comparison is not with massively over-spec'ed gaming machines or CAD monsters. It is with the bottom end desktop boxes, etcetera that millions of office workers use.
Two of the factors that drive price in the PC marketplace are competition and scale. On the one hand, if WYSE (or whoever) are the only people selling thin client machines, then they don't need to worry about competitors undercutting them. On the other hand is WYSE is only selling low volumes of thin client machines (because most customers are buying regular desktops/laptops/notebooks/whatever), then they have to sell them at a higher price to recoup development costs, costs of setting up production lines, costs of buying components in smaller volumes, marketing costs and so on.
stand of the shoulders of others (Score:2, Informative)
Sun Ray's work well and are cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You're not missing anything (Score:5, Informative)
Eh? Don't know what you're on about. I'm sitting here posting this on a thin client. I have a standard PC keyboard, monitor and mouse. I am looking at a normal PC session (in my case Gnome on Linux, but whatever). No retraining required, either for software or hardware. My hardware is an old PC with nothing but the motherboard left in it, running LTSP client. Cost me effectively nothing.
Thinnish thick clients. (Score:4, Informative)
A minor computer firm is subcontracted to assemble cheapest PCs. They build normal self-contained PCs running the cheapest OEM Windows available. These are $80(+OS) machines running on parts that are a storage surplus after they went out of sale. Then they install the "thin client" software which is some kind of Telnet or VNC or a web browser with intranet connection, pointed at a PHP web app.
So basically the employee boots up the computer normally, starts the app fullscreen and does most of the work remotely.
This has several advantages. The workstations can be troubleshooted locally. They can back up your work if network connection goes down. They allow for custom PC hardware (card readers, barcode scanners, webcams for teleconferencing and so on). They can be upgraded if the need arises, and fixed using off-the-shelf hardware (unless it went so obsolete it's unobtainable). And due to economy of scale, they are cheaper than dedicated thin clients despite being way overpowered.
I've seen quite a few markets and institutions running a system like this.
Re:You're not missing anything (Score:3, Informative)
$200, $300 is missing the point. If you've going VDI, most of the money will be spent in training the end user, in the displays and their mounting.
You can regularly get quite decent 22" LCDs for under $200 now. So, no, the thin client is a massive part of the cost, and the whole point of moving to them is that the maintenance costs decrease.
Re:virtualised setup even (Score:2, Informative)
Here is the link:
http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/rhev-spice-guest-drivers-released-windows [linux-kvm.com]
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:5, Informative)
It is with the bottom end desktop boxes
Which usually contain COTS hardware. Which a thin client can also use today. Like the submitter said, slapping together a thin client is easy.
they have to sell them at a higher price to recoup development costs
There are basically no development costs in this case, nor are the components high margin enough that production volume can make a significant difference in purchasing price. We're not talking special hardware here, we're talking miniITX/laptop MB's which are produced in the bazillions range whether or not a thin client producer uses them.
Personally I'd say the higher price is because the target market is almost fully corporate and corporate purchasers usually have difficulty comparing prices with anything that's not explicitly listed as equivalent. Which gets you the old triple-the-list-price and then let them negotiate a 50% discount and the customer will feel good about his leet bargaining skillz.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:3, Informative)
Chip PC [chippc.com] also sell thin client machines. I don't know how the price compares to Wyse. They don't sell direct, so you need to contact one of their resellers.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:5, Informative)
The more you pay for a bicycle the less you get? What on Earth are you talking about?
The most expensive bicycles are not full-suspension mountain bikes that can go anywhere. They are racing bikes with few gears and really suited only for flat terrain (although with a sufficiently powerful "motor" you can go up hills, of course.) So yes, the more you pay, the less you get. It's not just weight, but it's largely because of weight.
Re:1996 called, (Score:5, Informative)
In order for thin clients to become more affordable than deploying standalone workstations, you need to deploy atleast 200 of them, and 200 workstations rules out a lot of businesses.
Cost of licensing and server infrastructure is really the problem, not the cost of thin clients themselves.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:3, Informative)
People are looking in the wrong place. Move outside Intel and AMD.
$99 for a computer in a keyboard [linuxfordevices.com] from Norhtec [norhtec.com]. (In fact, the prototype is still linked in my sig, but I have no connection to the company.) Video is available at Linux For Devices, but the Gecko Surfboard doesn't appear to be listed on tNorhtec's site yet.
Acer Aspire Revo AR1600-U910H (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228 [newegg.com]
$200 and should drive a 22" monitor no problems, can't confirm PXE bootable, but with 160GB HD it should be easy enough to load up a netboot stack.
Re:I'm Confused (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:2, Informative)
The client is not the expensive bit (Score:2, Informative)
Not just the cheap thin client, it is the data centre side where you really pay.
From experience, thin clients save neither money nor power cost once you have taken the hit on the data centre side server, storage and networking capacity they will take and then the huge bill for the virtualisation management software. (assuming you are using Windows type thin clients, if you use SunRay and Solaris yes you can save some serious cost but most users will WINE until you connect the SunRay to RDP off a Windows server and giver them their familiar environment back)
HP Thinclients (Score:4, Informative)
Re:1996 called, (Score:4, Informative)
The organisation I work at (it's a university) spends about a million quid a year because people fail to turn off PCs overnight. The running costs of your cheap Dell POS are much higher; the power consumption too.
For clerical and administrative staff, we can put 7-14 virtualised desktops onto a single box/blade - more with non-whole-stack virtualisation or terminal services. We put our heat generation in a few places, we do get better utilisation. We also export pictures of our data to users, not the data itself, which is quite a bonus.
The downsides are what you'd expect: mostly, we have fewer spindles to deliver storage to the desktops (this is the biggest issue we face, I think); multimedia is okay-ish; for heavy computational users there aren't really gains to be had.
It's certainly got its place. Anyone selling you a "one size fits all" for your organisation probably doesn't understand your organisation, but this isn't not a completely incredible approach.
Options (Score:5, Informative)
They're getting there, just be patient!
I'm about the evaluate the Fit-PC2 for work, which can be had in diskless forms for under $250. http://www.fit-pc.com/ [fit-pc.com]
And I'm currently posting from an EeePC 901 running eeebuntu, which is actually quite a bit better and can be had for under $200. Plug in an external monitor, and rig up the built-in LCD and peripherals as a fancy KVM switching interface for your various VNC, RDP, VMware, NX, etc. backends. I'm really impressed by the Compiz desktop performance, so you can still get pretty slick transitions between various sessions on different virtual desktops.
And I'm really looking forward to the explosion of new nVidia ION netbooks and nettops, which will actually give a real nVidia 9400 GPU and dual-core Atom processors to these "thin clients", which means they can actually be used more or less like a real box in terms of running web-based interfaces and things without stuttering and pausing occasionally.
So with a dirt-cheap nettop, unfortunately you'll pay a little bit more than your target, but at least you get extra features (like a small SSD, built-in speakers, keyboard/mouse/multitouchpad, and maybe even a webcam, etc. that you could probably put to good use with a bit of creativity.
Thin clients for under $200 right now (Score:3, Informative)
HP's offering: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/12454-12454-321959-338927-3640405-4063703.html [hp.com] - $199
This is ARM-based mind.
From Dell:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/inspiron-zino-hd/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-zino-hd&s=dhs&cs=19 [dell.com]
$250 right now, but was about $200 during black friday
From Acer:
http://www.frys.com/product/6054148 [frys.com]
$200, has been $180.
To be fair, all these products are very recent, and I wouldn't expect anyone to be aware of them.
There are others too, but they tend to cost more.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Some of us have jobs that involve lots of users. I wouldn't want to put together more than two or three boxes, let alone hundreds or thousands of them.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:4, Informative)
Let me answer your points directly as someone who has been doing some POC's of thin clients in a large (40k+ environment)
1. it simply switches the cost of the workstation maintenance to the back office as you need an immensely powerful data centre to drive thousands/tens of thousands of these terminals;
True except it is always cheaper to manage and maintain those systems than desktops. We know per unit how much each desktop costs us to manage and maintain and we also know the same information for our big-iron boxes and Citrix farm and it came out that if we could serve 20 users per server it was a large cost savings and it helped with support. We even got savings at 10 per
2. you still need a service desk as most requests we get are for new employee accounts and handling typical release incident;
You need this now anyway in a large enterprise environment and you now need less deskside people and remote support is easier.
3. people want to stay competitive and having a one size fits all typically prohibits one-offs, even if there is an obvious advantage;
Not if you do VDI which means you deliver a full desktop to the users
4. problems affecting a cluster will affect everyone so you still need backup PCs for critical service delivery.
No you just have a multiple deployments and redundancy. In most large corporations most apps are client server (Regardless of if that is a fat client or web client) so there is experience in making systems redundant.
Does it work for every user? No but it does for most, the challenges are:
1) The initial cost of deployment
2) User and business acceptance
If you can solve those issues you will experience year to year cost reductions.
Re:It's like bicycles... (Score:3, Informative)
My gut feeling is because the people shopping for them are demonstrably suckers. If you have a customer that's willing to spend money based on ridiculous fashion trends, why not convince them that an expensive specialty thin client is magically better than a cheaper, more useful, low-end pc?