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 Larry Wilcox on
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How did you come to the conclusion of number of processor cores being the determining factor as to how well Fiddlehead worked? Have you tested on the latest iteration of Fiddlehead? I have worked with Fiddlehead and had various "issues" and if a quad four processor will fix I want to give it a try.
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Permalink Reply by Leslie Dixon on
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We used an NComputing setup in the High School computer lab for a while last year. It was a host computer with 3 other stations connected to it, sharing the resources of the first one. (I called it "guinea pig row.) We had some trouble with students printing from one station and the print message coming up on a different monitor, so we just turned the print message off. We also had issues with our tracking software, with all students logging in under their own names through Novell, but had to turn some of our security software off so were unable to monitor their behavior. But, on the other hand, I had students run "tests" where they were all on Word documents, PowerPoint or the Internet, and it actually worked pretty well. (Sometimes, the station furthest from the host or the last one logged in, was slower. We increased the memory in the host and that helped.) I would suggest you buy one setup and test it out for yourself. That way you can work out the bugs with the software and decide if it makes sense for your school.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Anderson on
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Hi Leslie,
Just thought I would add some technical info to your post (I am the Tech). The original test machine had 512MB or memory and we increased it to 1GB, ideally it is recommended that you have at least 512MB per station. The computer was a 4 year old HP DC5000, 2.8GHz cpu with a 40 GB HD (which was the oldest machines we had available). I am in the process now of setting it up on a new computer (DC5700) and hopefully with at least 2 - 3GB of memory.
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Colleen McCleary on
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Leslie,
We had the same issue with our tracking software w/our Ncomputing pilot, vut they gave us a utility which enables individual IP's for each station, and it addressed that. We also had issues with Google Earth running on all at the same time, but by upgrading to the latest version IE it seemed to address it.
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I am currently testing two NComputing X300 sets in our school district. So far the results are mixed, and we are finding things out all the time. So far my testing was based on using our oldest computers as hosts, and only 1GB of memory, and 40GB hard drives. I am in the process of setting up a test now, with a new HP DC5700, DuoCore computer with 120GB HD and 2GB of memory, and I expect it to work much better. There were a few things that we found out early in our testing, but none were really what I would consider deal breakers.
I am also real interested in the Fiddlehead system (actually I am interested in any of these types of solutions), and hopefully will get to try one out. I thing the big thing here is to try out the different solutions, and figure out which ones can work for you where. I think the answer is probably a combination of different solutions, that will form its own solution. But the one thing that I do know, is that we can not afford the number of computers that we need (or will need in the future). I am a believer in one to one computing (in appropriate subject areas).
The biggest problem that I see, is that people expect these solutions to do everything that a full computer does now. These types of solutions will never be as "good" as having an individual computer for each user (when you are using one computer to replace 4 or more computers, it will never be as good). But these types of solutions could probably be used 75% or more of the time, and could reduce costs by more than 50%. I think the questions that need to be asked, is not whether these types of solutions will work, but where can "we" (your school) use these types of solutions. Some other solutions that should be looked into would also be Linux, LTSP and other terminal servers (Citrix, etc). The whole key should be to reduce costs and increase services. Do you want 30 computers that can do everything, or do you want 90 computers that will accomplish everything!
But remember, if you are going to try and change the world, then you have to be prepared to change the way you currently do things. Because all of these solutions will require some change in the way we do things now.
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Permalink Reply by David Lockstein on
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Paul,
Send me an email dlockstein@multi-station.com I will give you a 4 workstation copy of softXpand to try. If you have a couple dual head video cards you can test this product out free for 80 hours.
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Permalink Reply by Michelle on
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Hello,
My school has the apple laptop carts and overall they have proven to be very beneficial. Our school (very old) had to be outfitted with many new wireless routers to allow the laptops to work in every classroom of the building. The kids love them and are excited to engage in a lesson involving the technology. I teach science and the laptops have allowed me to do a lot of virtual labs with the entire class, as opposed to having 4 or 5 on the computer at a time and the rest doing something else. The only real drawbacks that I see is that the batteries don't last very long. If I need to use the computers for an entire morning (3-1 hour classes in a row) I start to run into dead batteries by the third class. Also, one cart per school of 15 classrooms is not enough. We could benefit from another, as they are well used and booked up all the time.
Food for thought!!
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Permalink Reply by Sue Tantalus on
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Hello,
This is in response to Tracy and Paula. We found that the nComputing solutions worked as well as a thin client, especially when we didn't care about the applications that were running or we knew exactly what we were going to install. We found that there were quite a few school type applications (including MovieMaker...let us know how you got MovieMaker running on the X300, Paula) that won't run on more than one station. We assumed that was because the system is sharing one copy of Windows. Our tech folks weren't really too excited about either, thin client or nComputing. They kind of wondered about the new Microsoft licensing brief that is very specific about nComputing not being legal when it comes to sharing a copy of Windows XP. But they have been talking to a couple of school districts in Florida and NY that have been using Fiddlehead and they like what they are hearing. According to our tech coordinator, Fiddlehead is a legal system that doesn't share one copy of Windows, so it doesn't run into the same licensing problems. It also will run applications because they are not being shared. I just thought I'd put my 2 cents in. I am all for saving money, especially in schools, but we just can't afford to get crosswise with Microsoft and we really can't spend our money on systems that won't run 32 bit video, or certain applications, so that knocked nComputing out. We'll keep you up-to-date on the Fiddlehead product. They have a free test program that doesn't cost anything. Go to www.myfiddlehead.com .
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Sue,
I am curious as to what Microsoft Licensing you are using with your Fiddlehead configuration?
From looking into this myself, I was getting run around from them as to what licensing was required. Since it runs one OS instance for each user, they said one needs a license for each user. From talking with my Microsoft reseller, he said that I would need Full Package Product Vista Licenses @ $299 per seat!! Even though I run XP, the OS is sold as Vista and that gives downgrade rights for XP. At first I saw several $50 Vist OS licenses available for education on line, but they were only UPGRADES, not the full license, and the upgrades require a base windows OS. I thought maybe I could upgrade licenses from the old PC's I am expiring, but no nice there...they are OEM licenses that cannot be transferred from the PC that they came from. I have not fould any ED pricing for the required Full Package Product.
$299 for OS license seems like a non-starter re Fiddlehead. Till I buy their product, the license, a monitor, KB, etc, I could have purhased a regular PC. At least with NComputing the licensing is docuented by Microsoft, and the price of the product in total would still be maybe half of my PC price.
So again, please help me understand what licensing you have for Fiddlehead and how the total cost per station can make sense?
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Permalink Reply by Jim D on
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Coleen;
I know that you were asking Sue, and I hope you don't mind if I answer. I assume that you are not using Microsoft School Campus Agreement. The cost is pretty much inconsequential if you are using that. It does require around 600 users before it is worth the up front investment. If not, you certainly don't have to purchase the $299 stuff. You need PN E85-05683 and the retail cost is around $130-$140. At that point, the software goes with you, not the PC, and you can replace the PC without having to purchase a new copy with the new PC. Then you CAN, in fact purchase the $50 upgrade licenses when you want to upgrade. If you don't want to upgrade, the PN I just gave you is portable and you can keep it.
The real cost savings for Fiddlehead comes 3 years down the road, when you don't have to pay MS again, nor do you have to buy Fiddlehead again, and you can reuse flat screens, keyboards and mice, etc. Of course the electricity and tech time savings really come into play as compared to regular PC's.
I think Fiddlehead is still giving away free demo units if you ask. www.myfiddlehead.com
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Agreed. I am an absolute FOSS advocate. Unfortunately we are stuck with running MS applications. We are using Fiddlehead to not only save money and time legally, but we are really using it to move from M$ to FOSS...Office to OpenOffice...etc.
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Permalink Reply by Salvatore Gentile on
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You do in fact need one license per station for a total of 4 in a 4head configuration. However Ncomputing violates MS licensing you are not allowed to have 4 simultaneous users using one license all at once. In fact many applications when used with Ncomputing are in violation of their license.
This being said I have never heard of a school buying retail copies of MS products many have a enterprise license that allows them to use the same key across hundreds even thousands of computers. This comes in at a very low cost per seat compared to buying each key at retail price.
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