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I agree- the cost of replacing workstations every 4-5 years is quite high. It takes a great deal of time, and supporting them during their lifetime does as well. We too are looking to virtualizing these types of workstations as well as general us public workstations in the library. Thin client offer a viable solution, particularly if you can use a lower end client that has no real moving parts that can break. There are a great many licensing issues to solve with respect to thin clients. We too have been looking into them for many of the same reasons you and Bob have outlined. Some of the MS licensing questions will be greatly minimized with a Campus agreement, which we still do not, but that might not be an option. MS requires a special VECD license for thin clients to connect to a virtual environment. With the educational costs, this is not too great of an expense, but it does add up. Initially I was afraid the MS costs would push costs too high on this project. The largest expense from our investigating is building the back end infrastructure to support VDI, i.e., in our case VMWare View 4, servers and a SAN. We have not completed the ROI, but it appears that it takes much longer than for building a virtual server environment. I too would be interested though in any new or different products folks were either looking at or employing. In our investigating we are most interested in the user experience, particularly for streaming video and sound. We are concerned that if we roll out a solution of this type and the video is poor, it will be rejected by students. Bob Trautvetter Head, Technology Support Northwestern Univ Library From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Ambroso Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 11:27 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: thin clients I think this is a pretty hot topic right now. I have been looking for 5 years for a solution to rid my library of business class PC's that do nothing other than serve up a webpage for OPAC access. To me it's a waste of resources and capital. That said, all VDI solutions that I have seen recently typically look great until you get to the Licensing part.. That one requirement seems to shoot all my ROI studies right out the window. I have, however, recently run across a product that is intriguing. The overall buy in is low and the clients are cheap.. The only problem I have and my MS licensing specialist is trying to figure out is whether Microsoft will ruin my party.. I could share my data with you off list if you are interested but the product I am looking at is the Double-Take Flex product.. Very inexpensive and every way I dice it - it works from an ROI standpoint.. Depending on where Microsoft lands I will see between 20 and 40% savings over just buying decent Dell machines. \Bob From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lisa Prolman Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 9:01 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [LIBNT-L] thin clients Greetings all: Given that patrons want more and more computers and my staff has shrunk from 25 full and part-timers to 13 full and part-timers in the last year, I am searching out ways to get my patrons more stations without having to spend more time than I already do on computer maintenance. Thin clients seem like a workable solution for us as long as I don't spend too much time thinking about how much it would cost up front. Anyway, has anyone done a thin client install over the last few years who can give me some pointers about what to look for? I have 11 PCs that access the Internet and offer MS Office (7 in main library, 4 in children's room), 5 catalog computers (3/2), and 2 databases. I know there is an open source that uses Linux, but I am not all that familiar with Linux and would feel more comfortable staying with Windows if possible. I would probably keep the staff PCs fat as I don't want to mess with our circulation network. I searched the archives for information about this but didn't find anything more recent than 2004. Any and all information is appreciated. Thanks in advance. Lisa Prolman Assistant Director Greenfield Public Library 402 Main Street Greenfield, MA 01301 (413) 772-1544 [log in to unmask] The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. -- Douglas Adams