Anyone here ever use thin clients for a home network?

[Arkitech]

Just wondering how that would work in a home with 4 or 5 family members. Lets say you have most family members basically browsing the net (facebook, email, etc.) and maybe audio or video streaming. What kind of machine would be needed to handle that kind of load? Could an i5 or i7 handle that kind of work?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Considering the costs for a server OS to use with those thin clients, and the fact that MS is discontinuing TechNet, I think not too many people use that option.

Each person owning their own PC is a much cheaper solution.

 

[John Connor]

I have a thin client in the kitchen I call the kitchen kiosk that I use to look crap up, it intercepts phone calls and blocks bill collectors and I use it to look up recipes. It has XP pro on it. 640 Mhz 1 GB of HDD space. A nettop would be a lot better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a thin client in the kitchen I call the kitchen kiosk that I use to look crap up, it intercepts phone calls and blocks bill collectors and I use it to look up recipes. It has XP pro on it. 640 Mhz 1 GB of HDD space. A nettop would be a lot better.

What server OS do you use with it?

 

[aigomorla]

Just wondering how that would work in a home with 4 or 5 family members. Lets say you have most family members basically browsing the net (facebook, email, etc.) and maybe audio or video streaming. What kind of machine would be needed to handle that kind of load? Could an i5 or i7 handle that kind of work?

ur better off with an AIO...
One of those monitor integrated setups, because a thin client still needs a screen + case if your doing entirely new setups.
You need to add CPU, RAM and SSD.

Unless u already have the monitors in place or would like to use large class monitors, then you'll probably want a VESA mountable case with your ITX Thin setup.

And for simple things you ask, an i3 can handle it even.
http://ark.intel.com/products/65693/
The IGP on it is even good enough for simple gaming....

And AMD APU Fusion thin client might also be a better solution, if ur more media orientated with these units.

you will run into problems with OS subscriptions tho... As larry has stated technet is closing, so that means unless you wish to upgrade to MSDN, you'll spend a lot of subscriptions to OS.

What server OS do you use with it?

i dont think the OP is asking for a server... he is asking for a client to be a thintop... or ITX-Thin....

And i use them at the Office and Home. They are Tiny... most are VESA mountable... they use a brick laptop style PSU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

i dont think the OP is asking for a server... he is asking for a client to be a thintop... or ITX-Thin....

And i use them at the Office and Home. They are Tiny... most are VESA mountable... they use a brick laptop style PSU.

You're talking about a nettop, which is it's own tiny computer system.

OP was asking about Thin Clients, which, by definition, don't do any local processing of their own, and require a back-end server and a network connection to run any types of programs.

OP, please clarify which style of computer you are asking about.

 

[jumpncrash]

at work we use D425KT boards with 2 gigs of ddr3 and whatever HDs they have as overstock when they build. They connect to a VNC server running on dual Xeons I believe, not sure which model though. everything is on linux

 

[Red Squirrel]

I don't imagine there are open source solutions available for this and the commercial ones arn't cheap. I have played briefly with the VMware based solution and it's kind of neat as it spins up VMs on the fly and you can have different VM profiles for different users etc. I think it does a clone or something or maybe every person has it's own delta file based on the main VM, not too sure how it works, but it was fairly quick.

You could use the thin client stand alone though, if it's just for web browsing and stuff. It's basically just a windows box, and I'm sure you can put Linux or any other OS if you want. Actually would be kinda interesting to see if you can have it run as a X server and load apps from a remote server to show locally. Hmmm, there may be a way to do this actually. Basically have the whole X desktop load from the remote server but show locally.

Found this real quick on Google: http://ltsp.org/ Looks interesting.