Thin Clients hardware???

[Rosee]

Does any one know "Thin Clients" technology? If you know the information about the how to run "Thin Clients", please share with me or send me the Internet links where I can find more information about it.

Especially, I would like to know what brand of hardware has the best match with Citrix Thin Clients technology. Wyse, Compaq Evo, or something else? Any pros and cons?

Thanks a lot.

 

[JohnTcolo]

We have a few of the NCD Thin Stars in our domain and they work pretty well. Their web site has a ton of info:

http://www.ncd.com

 

[wlpsyp]

I have 80 clients out of 600+ that are running thin client. I use the HP E-PC's. Work great. Only draw back is if the user needs access to a floppy or Zip drive you will have to hang an external on the box. Also some issues with Smart Card readers. I prefer Metaframe over Windows in regards to the thin client ICA versus RDP. However I have not worked yet with the Windows Terminal Services, so right now I am one sided.

 

[icomlw]

Wyse has several excellent units, these allow for modifications and allow for usb floppy drives. They are probably the best I've used. These are what I usually deploy at client sites. (some 50,000)

Capio is another unit that I have deployed. They offer much of the same benefits that Wyse does. However Wyse is usually several months ahead of them when it comes to fixes or client upgrades.

You will also want to make sure that any unit that you decide to deploy has the ability to be "flash programmed" or flashed from a central location. Failure to recognize this as a major need ALWAYS comes back to haunt you in the future.

Wyse also OEM's alot of the other units that are on the market from Compaq to HP. (they do not have exclusive contracts, so HP does OEM from other manufacturers.)

Make sure the unit you get has enough memory on it, as future flashes may additional memory. Also any additional memory can be used for flashing.

A NT and some CE based units will allow you to publish applications to the user. While a Linux unit is less expensive you will have to publish desktops. The NT units have IE built in so the user gets a desktop. The desktops can be somewhat customized from a central location.

Things to think about.

Serial Ports.
Parallel Ports.
Peripheral devices.

Network printing is the best way to go if you are deploying thin clients.

Please feel free to call or email specific questions, I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Lloyd R. Witt
MCSE, CCA, CCEA, CDIA
Senior Systems Consultant
Vector ESP
847-797-9898 Ext 222

lloyd.witt@vecor.com

 

[OzDog]

Hey Lloyd - just reading your post, and wondering if you could expand on the USB floppy drives?

We run Compaq T1010 and T20 thin client devices and the one thing I want to do is add floppy drives (and CD-ROM if possible) to them. I could the remove around 80% of the remaining PCs on site, as this is their only justification. Cheers,
Sam

Please let members know if you found their posts helpful.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Anything with an ICA client on will connect just fine to a Citrix server. I would hesitate to say that there is a "best match".

I used WYSE terminals (400 of them) for my first rollout, and they were, on the whole, a joy to work with - the company, not just the terminals.

As a historical note, back in 1995-6, both WYSE and Tektronix formed OEM agreements with Citrix, so both companies have been in the game for the longest.

However, I have enjoyed working with NCD stations and other devices - including old pentium PCs running the 32-bit DOS client. When I say "enjoyed", I mean that they generally cause few issues. You get the odd dud, but are much easier to manage than PCs.

Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk