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Multiple concurrent users on a PC?

M

marcplante

Senior member
I have a reasonably fairly powerful desktop with a quad core processor. I have a three year old and a five year old that are playing basic kids games or surfing to Nickjr.com. not a lot of heavy processing, though occasional video rendering.

Is it possible to fire up two parallel instances on the PC? or does it require expensive virtualization software? I figured it'd be easier to maintain one box. I have multiple drives and OS licenses if needed. I suspect the MB doesn't have the appropriate switching for IO devices, etc.

just a stupid thought that crosses a sleep deprived mind.

Just buy a second, barebones box instead?

MP
 
I believe you can switch users on the fly and the system will maintain each users' current desktop. For example, you can log into your account and then switch user to your kids account. You can switch back and forth as needed. Just ctrl-alt-delete and select switch user. Since each account can have it's own access policies those will still be in effect.
 
You can use fast user switching as Anteaus says, but nothing concurrent with Windows. You could do this with Linux but you'd need multiple video cards, keyboards, mice, etc and I don't think it would be that simple to setup.
 
There used to be some software that came with Jetway motherboards called "MagicTwin", that claimed to be able to do this.

Apparently MS frowns on this, even though the OS is capable of it, with the right configuration, because they want everyone to have their own PC, and likewise, their own paid-for copy of Windows.

It's true that computers these days are so ridiculously powerful, that you could run several users off of them. Combined with video cards with multiple outputs, and multiple USB mice/keyboards, it should be doable.
 
The MagicTwin is not completely a software solution. It required a custom systemboard and what amounted to 2 sound cards, 2 videos cards (or a dual card), some custom adapters for the mouse and keyboard.

I would like your source on "Apparently MS frowns on this, even though the OS is capable of it, with the right configuration, because they want everyone to have their own PC, and likewise, their own paid-for copy of Windows."

MS licenses on to the hardware (for home / OEM at least.) If they frowned on multiple users they wouldn't offer multiple logged in users like they have since XP.
 
I used to support a non profit that had over a dozen kids sharing sessions on a single P3 based Terminal Server concurrently for game playing and such. With todays quads and cheap memory I can support about a hundred desktop sessions on a single Windows box.

What the OP is asking about is session sharing, and it's not very practical with Windows without rather pricey hardware. This hardware used to be more common in the late 90's when PCs typically cost several grand. I worked with several where you just plugged a card into a PCI slot and it created an extra Windows session with all the inputs. Then somebody at Citrix figured out they could license Terminal Server back to Microsoft and make a bundle by allowing you to skip a few PC upgrade cycles. Now PC's are cheap, Terminal Server licenses are expensive, and VMware is chomping at the bit to get everybody to use VDI on cheap 'Zero' clients.

So, the answer o the OP is 'yes', but likely nothing he wants to mess around with because the price he'll pay to set up a client is about the same he'll spend just getting a spare PC going.
 
Jack MDS is right. Heck, Ive got a P4 2.8GHz HT I'll send you for $50 shipped (mostly shipping) running Linux Mint 9 that absolutely flies. 60GB HDD and 1.5GB RAM. More than enough horsepower for someone to play web browser games. Radeon 9800 in it I believe. In the process of piecing together whole machines out of all the stuff I have laying around. The case leaves something to be desired, but it runs, and is stable so far, i'm still in the process of testing it thoroughly. Gigabyte board as well if I recall. This system is one that is going to end up on FS/FT or craigslist anyway, PM if you're interested, if not, no worries. A low end machine that is virus proof is really the best solution for kid machines.
 
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