Michael O'Keefe wrote:
real-estate, and the fact that since all we use is
FireFox/Thunderbird/IE/serial terminal app/microfiche viewer , the
"power" of most computers is TERRIBLY underutilised today. That's why
vmWare is so popular in our (my day job) labs !
And actually, I wanted to make it 6-headed, but Dell screwed me. The
BIOS for their SC430 de-activated the onboard VGA if a slot-based VGA is
installed. They didn't do this with their SC420 servers. So with
2PCI/3PCIe slots, I was hoping to have a 6-headed system for $2200.
That would have been $366 per seat !
As is it, it's going to be about $450/seat
(I had to send back 3 PCIe cards, becoz they were x16, and now buy the 3
Matrox PCIe 1x cards - and they are a little more expensize than the 16x
cards)
Okay, $450 per seat. For a task that basically any computer in the last
5 years can do.
So, taking a quick look at Dell, I see an Inspiron B130 for $489. That
gets you a computer with a display, Windows, and a UPS (aka-a battery).
Real-estate wise, the laptops probably take up about the same space as
your LCD monitors + keyboards (less if you are still using CRT's).
Power consumption is probably better for the 5 laptops. Each of those
can likely run on a 100W power supply or less.
And, if a motherboard, memory, cpu, or hard disk dies, you only lose one
machine.
I still don't understand unless you actually have the hardware already
laying around.
-a
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