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We are seriously considering using nettops for use with VMware View 4. As Jeffrey mentions, they use very little power, quiet, normally fanless and fairly cheap. In testing they do have two fairly major drawbacks. First, they come with home editions of Windows which makes management more difficult as you cannot join them to Active Directory. Second, I cannot find a way to map an onboard optical drive to the virtual machine. The best I can find is to map them to the VM like a network share which kinda works for data disks but does not for playing a DVD. I have yet to try a USB optical drive to see if that works any better. Matt Stork System Administrator Northwestern University Library (847) 491-3758 | [log in to unmask] No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message, but a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. -----Original Message----- From: Library NT [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Pike Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 7:13 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: thin clients > 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. Lisa: You might also want to consider Nettop-class machines, like Acer's AspireRevo, full-function, standalone PCs in a tiny form factor, fanless and quiet and use very little power, and generally sell for under $500. Only drawback is they don't have optical drives onboard. Newegg.com is selling the AspireRevo with 2 Gb RAM, 160 Gb hard drive, Gigabit Ethernet with Windows 7 Home Premium for $329.99. And you won't have to burden your server with terminal services. Jeffrey Pike Technology Services Librarian Groton Public Library Groton, MA 01450 [log in to unmask]