Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > > 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.
I can see quite a few benefits: 1) Administrative: one system to patch and update, instead of 5. 2) Replacement: if a customer spills a beverage, it is cheaper to replace a keyboard (50$, for decent one) instead of 500+$ for a replacement laptop. That has to be imaged. Spare keyboards can be ket on hand, even, for downtime measured in minutes instead of hours or days. 3) Cost: laptops, even used ones, are not cheap. Trying to get 5 identicle, cheap, lapptops could prove difficult. If they are significantly different, it becomes a larger support nightmare. 4) Shrinkage: laptops are more vaulable to theives than a keyboard/monitor pair 5) Security: it is easier to boot a laptop off of a removeable media device than a keyboard/monitor. 6) User data on a laptop: this may cause a backup issue, but this is more of a minor point as there should be no valuable data locally, anyway. The cheapest small business laptop I found from Dell is 499, after a 50$ instant savings. This is still more per seat than what Mike already found with the multi-seat setup. Sounds to me that Mike has found a very good solution for his business. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-steer
