Laptop Carts and the NComputing Solution
Hi!
I am the technology coordinator for a small (250 student) 4 - 8 school located in a high poverty urban district. We are trying to outfit our school with computers and looking at using NComputing cards to decrease the cost of putting multiple PCs in each classroom. NComputing puts a network card into a desktop box that you can then connect to 3 other monitors, mice, and keyboards. In effect, you get 4 terminals that share the resources of one computer. Supposedly it works fine as long as you aren't using graphically intensive programs. Using this solution we are looking at putting 4 terminals into each of our 10 classrooms for about $15,000 - $17,000. Has anyone used this product? How satisfied were you with it?
We are also looking at purchasing a laptop cart. I know Apple has a solution but I haven't researched many others. Can anyone share experience with purchasing and using a laptop cart?
I am the technology coordinator for a small (250 student) 4 - 8 school located in a high poverty urban district. We are trying to outfit our school with computers and looking at using NComputing cards to decrease the cost of putting multiple PCs in each classroom. NComputing puts a network card into a desktop box that you can then connect to 3 other monitors, mice, and keyboards. In effect, you get 4 terminals that share the resources of one computer. Supposedly it works fine as long as you aren't using graphically intensive programs. Using this solution we are looking at putting 4 terminals into each of our 10 classrooms for about $15,000 - $17,000. Has anyone used this product? How satisfied were you with it?
We are also looking at purchasing a laptop cart. I know Apple has a solution but I haven't researched many others. Can anyone share experience with purchasing and using a laptop cart?
Tags: labs, laptop carts
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul Anderson on
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The last advice that we got, was to purchase a server license, and terminal server cals for all stations. Same goes with Office, need cals or licenses for each station. With all other programs, you most likely need to have a license for each station (4,7 or 6,11 for the new x550's). The idea behind this type of computing should not be looked at as a way to save software monies (unless you go with some open source apps), but to save the expense of buying 4-11 computers and then maintaining them. These devices should last at least one upgrade cycle, so it also saves you that expense as well. You could put 500 stations in, and only have to purchase as few as 46 computers (x550 with 2 cards for a total of 11 per computer - would recommend raided hard drives, and 4GB of memory (you cant use all 4, but 3+). We got ours for around $1500. This would cost you about $69,000, compare that to how much you would spend if you bought 500 computers. (not including monitors of course). And don't forget about the electricity savings (cooling and computers).
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Permalink Reply by Jim D on
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I agree and that is what we saw when we implemented nComputing. The only problem was that it didn't work with many of our educational softwares. We couldn't run Moviemaker (it gave the error - "A copy of this is already running. Please turn it off before trying again"), or CCC (same error), or SuccessMaker (same thing) or Compass (same thing), etc. Even when we implemented nComputing in the few areas we have that only do web browsing or Office, in order to be legal we had to run Terminal Services on the host PC. I made it look just like XP and locked it down as tight as a drum. Problem with that was that it took one kid with an ERD Commander disk and the "host" PC was compromised. Once a Terminal Server is compromised, it is much easier to compromise the domain controller... I remembered at that point that there was a reason we put our servers behind locked doors! The BS about putting 11 users on one PC was just that...BS, also. I guess the reason Fiddlehead doesn't allow more than 4 users per quad core PC is to make SURE that it runs like a real PC. They could probably run 11 users but it would run just as poorly as 11 users on nComputing.
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We are running Linux on one head, Windows XP on a second head, Vista on a 3rd head and Windows 7 on the last head. ...and you can run Linux applications from within any of those heads just by clicking the application icon, just like native.
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Paul;
I agree, we need to keep our minds open when it comes to delivering the best solution for the teachers and students. I had a lot of high hopes for a lot of the technology that you mentioned...Citrix, LTSP, nComputing, etc., and it's not that they don't work well, they just don't do everything for everybody. Nothing accomplishes that task! I have found though, that the Fiddlehead solution, although not as cheap as nComputing, does do almost everything that a regular PC does, at the speed of a PC, in the same manner as a PC, AND it saves a ton of tech time and initial cost (and future cost). www.myfiddlehead.com
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Permalink Reply by Colleen McCleary on
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Jim,
How did you license the OS for your fiddlehead deployment?
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Permalink Reply by Dave Little on
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Colleen, We have a campus agreement but I believe Fiddlehead will work with your Microsoft reseller for proper licensing. Give them a call they're great to work with.
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Coleen;
The single pack OEM FRP PN is E85-05683. It is around $130 on the street. It is a full retail non-academic product that you keep...it doesn't have to stay with the machine when you replace it next time. Future copies of Windows are upgrades only (a lot less expensive)
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That seems correct but the lowest price we can get the full retail version of Vista (downgradeable) is $210.00. Does this mean that a Fiddlehead setup needs five FRP's of Windows for five stations?
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Permalink Reply by Benoit des Ligneris on
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Well, I'm a strong advocate of thin client computing and more precisely the FLOSS LTSP / LTSP-Cluster solution. The solution should not be tied to any specific hardware as this a is a long term solution : what hardware will you buy in 10 years from now ?
Thin client can do a lot but not necessarily everything for any usage (think: Multimedia, 3D, etc.).
The new Atom platform from Intel (the one we found into most of the Netbook from Asus, HP, Dell, MSI, etc.) is however a very interesting solution as you can deploy local applications (i.e. :applications running on the thin-client itself) so that you can now have Multimedia, 3D, Video, etc. applications with an excellent speed (the Atom platform includes a Dual core processor!).
So my advice will be to consider 100% Open Source solutions that will fit your needs : nowadays, Web-based applications are multimedia and need a fast thin client not a slow one. Especially given the price-tag ot the new Atom based platform...
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As you said, the campus agreement works great. If you are not using school campus agreement, you need a license for every station. You don't need FRP at all. In fact I found MS PN GA290AV#ABA and it was less than $100. The nice thing about that is that the school owns it, and it stays with the school. I don't have to keep paying for it every time I need new PC's. I can purchase PC's without a license in the future and just keep upgrading this as needed and when I want, not when the vendor wants.
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We love the LTSP solution. Much easier to implement than building a Citrix/Terminal Server solution. Problem is that we have to be able to support Microsoft applications for our schools and it is hard to do that using LTSP. Fiddlehead has been a wonderful solution for us. It allows us to run open source applications just like they were native and run MS applications within our Windows XP or Windows 7 desktop. It is EXACTLY like you have a Windows desktop because you do have a Windows desktop! ...and, unlike nComputing, it is totally legal. In fact we have seen a large school district do it using Lenovo M58's as 2 head machines without having to add an extra video card. Just plug in the extra set of monitors, keyboards and mice, and update the control kernel/BIOS and load Windows.
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Permalink Reply by Janine on
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Were you curious about usage or just the tech support aspect? We have been using them for about 4 years now, and they are as integrated as a #2 pencil ever was. :). Biggest tech issues were a set of cheap, short life (only good for about 70 minutes of use) Dell batteries that weakened to 15 min of use in a short time and the new system of forcing software upgrades upon student log-in creating a long wait time for the user. Here the pencil beats the computer everytime :) If you are looking for ways to integrate them into learning, then I would have things to discuss. We did have thin clients for a while. They were limited and often went unused.
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