Re: [seul-edu] Donated Computers announcement, Take III

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Monday 06 May 2002 11:18, Matt Jezorek wrote:
>> The price tag is also attractive. "School decisions are often
>> dominated by cost; much Open Source software is available at little or
>> no cost, and runs well on donated computers," Mr Brooks explained,
>> "Linux is easy to set up as a fast diskless workstation or `thin
>> client', so many schools are rolling out networks using this
>> technology with both donated and new equipment.

> I have meet alot of people who are scared of thin clients.
> While they make sense cost wise for some reason people still dont trust
> the reliability of them. One guy told me well the problem is this. Now
> instead of one persons machine going down you worry about the server going
> down and everyone not being productive.

I can see that with Windows this would be a fearsome prospect. However, 
coupled with servers that practically never go down, not such an issue. 
Clusters of servers and automated failover also count for a lot. Perhaps the 
simplest way to convey the essence of this is:

The price tag is also attractive. "School decisions are often dominated by
cost; much Open Source software is available at little or no cost, and
runs efficiently and reliably on donated computers," Mr Brooks explained,
"Linux is easy to set up as a fast diskless workstation or `thin client',
so many schools are rolling out networks using this technology with both
donated and new equipment.

Cheers; Leon