Robert- Nice overview, thanks! This is definitely a good way to configure a lab where central processing and fast drive access is not an issue. More importantly, as you stated, the multimedia issues are avoided. You can always set up icons to run particular applications to run on a remote server, for instance, a C++ IDE/compiler would probably run faster on a big central box with fast drives, but let Xine, Firefox, and OpenOffice run on the terminals.
As far as power consumption goes, I've done a bit of tinkering over the past year, and you would be surprised how energy efficient most PCs without hard drives and ultra-graphics cards are. Most will idle around 45 watts, from my experience. Old systems like PII-266's, Celeron 1.7GHz, P4-2.8, you name it. However, I cannot go below 40 watts with even a VIA C7 motherboard/CPU running on a standard ATX power supply. I think a standard ATX power supply must have a minimum power usage of 30-40 watts. I have an disklessworkstations terminal that uses a laptop-style PS and it idles at only 9W, and is basically the same hardware as the C7 ATX unit. The most power-efficient "standard" PC I have is an old stripped-down Digital P100 that I use for my home firewall. When I first got my Kill-A-Watt I feared the worst when I tested this old unit, but it idles down to 20W! Clearly there is some misinformation out there about PC power usage, since all they try to sell are 500W power supplies and up, when a 150-200W would work for most systems. In summary, once you get a PC below 50-60W at idle, you've probably gone as low as you can, and it won't be cost-effective at around $.10/KWh to get it lower. If you want 10W range with no fans, buy a terminal. -Todd ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
