Travis Kensil - Church I.T.

Gotten a couple emails about our thin clients…thought I’d share some details for those that might be interested.

BACKGROUND (skip if all you want is the techy stuff)

About a year ago some of our ministries wanted designated stations for their volunteers/nonstaff personnel to work without having to use their systems. At the time I didn’t want to invest big $$$ in desktop systems for volunteers who may come and go as well as all the headaches associated with security of desktop systems; enter the thin client. I looked at options from HP and other main stage players in the thin client arena but couldn’t seem to find anything cheap; some thin clients were more than desktops! Finally after much research I came across Ncomputing. They are a relatively new startup out of California with pretty cool products and good support especially when you consider you don’t have to pay for it! Their machines hit below $200 a piece and even include additional-purchase management software for all the clients.

THE TECHIE PART

(L100 pictured - currently the “old model”)

The concept is pretty simple…the little black box has a main board that contains some basic firmware, has no moving parts and contains your monitor/keyboard/etc. hookups. Everything runs from the server (host) device you connect it to. Ncomputing has a network option as well as a hard wired option that involves a pci card and a short distance to the server. Basically you install Ncomputing’s server software on your host XP/2003 box…the client boxes automatically find the host and connect…from there everything is a standard WinXP/2003 session as if you were locally logged in to a box. We run a WinXPPRO virtual machine and have had no problems since install.

These boxes work great for the “average” web/Office user…they have no dedicated video in the box which means everything is done server side which does make multimedia difficult if not impossible. In tests and production we can still not get decent performance from users when they attempt to watch Youtube videos or play videos. Ncomputing does however have a newer thin client model that is suppost to improve performance, have not tested however. For users who only surf the web and do Office these boxes rock. Some of my boxes have been in use for 2+ years with no issues. Updates/upgrades to the OS/applications need only be done on the host machine. If we could get better performance out of them video wise I would consider using them for some of our full-time staff/users. I have also tinkered with using them for our new checkin system (more about that later)…although I would need USB ports. The newest L230 from Ncomputing has a USB port which we would need.

If your looking for some thin clients without the hefty price tag (thanks HP) you might want to give Ncomputing a try. Here is the coolest part…they will let you test drive their equipment for 30 days before you buy! Ncomputing Test Drive