WinTerms can be had for under $300/unit in quantity. We bought LCD panels, and then there is a mounting bracket available for <$15 that mounts the winterm to the back of the LCD, so it's a VERY small footprint. Including the cost of the LCD panels, we got the complete setups for JUST under $600/desk (we bought quantity, and this was also almost 2 years ago, LCD's have come down in price by now -- we have 15" NEC's).
As for gauging the hardware required to support x number of users, you need to do some SERIOUS evaluation of the applications you want to use, and their respective processor/memory needs...
This is my rig, and it supports ~500 users:
I have 6 of the following:
IBM x330
Dual P3 1.133Ghz
4Gb RAM
Dual 10/100 NICs
IBM 4Lx hardware RAID cards (single channel)
Dual 18.2Gb OS drives (hardware mirror)
That means at peak utilization, I am supporting ~83 users PER SERVER. Applications are:
4 IE6 sessions per user (web apps)
A custom TELNET application
Outlook 2000
Exchange 2000
Excel 2000
However-- M$ does not recommend more than 40 users per box.. To get to where we are, I had to do quite a bit of SERIOUS modification to the setups. If you are going to go this route, make CERTAIN you run TScale. It is a memory management utility that SERIOUSLY cleans up system performance. I am not sure of the current pricing, but I THINK it's somewhere around $1200 for a dual processor system, but don't quote me on the price. TScale is so good that I have publicly endorsed them, and they quoted me in their press release of their IPO.
There was also some SERIOUS modification to the network design. Its is completely against everything you'll find anywhere from M$ about how to configure an NLB group, but it more than doubles the network throughput that you'll get if you set it up their way (network throughput was a HUGE issue for us in the beginning -- each incoming connection generates 6 outbound connections for the apps, plus regular authentication traffic and access to their central file storage on the file server, plus RDP itself uses 48k of bandwidth -- ICA uses only 16k, but Citrix is a FORTUNE).
You'll also need a central file server to store the profiles, and you'll need to be VERY careful if you're going to use mandatory profiles for any of your users -- you'll want to store the mandatory profiles local to each server and set the profile path to the local drive, otherwise to resolve the network name you'll have to climb the stack up and down, and that will seriously tie up your processor, depending on the number of users you are trying to stuff into a box..
I would recommend following the M$ specs to build this stuff, unless you already have some pretty hardcore experience with thin client computing, or you have a REALLY good mentor...
PS - I'm available for $125/hr plus travel expenses, if you need.. Let me know how many servers and the list of apps and I can quote you a price for my labor..
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