This is making me think ‘virtual desktop’, such as VMware’s VDI, only being run on the local workstation at the user level. Am I terribly off-base here?
Thin clients>>Virtual desktops is pretty sweet. I started using it at work in a few departments, and it’s awesome. You can have all of the desktops in the datacenter, a cheap thin client that’ll practically last forever not needing replacement, and if a user’s hardware requirements increase, with a few mouse clicks you can give them more resources. You can also use the ‘checkout’ feature to allow certain users to even take their ‘workstation’ home, or travel with them on mobile devices(laptops, Tablets, ect). Malware infection(for windows users)? Revert that sucker to a snapshot and forget about it.
It almost makes the PC itself obsolete for most uses. To setup another computer, it’s literally as easy as a ‘copy/paste’ in Windows. Literally nothing to it. For people starting out these days, I would strongly encourage techs to learn server hardware, networked storage, and Virtualization(vmware specifically). That’s the direction where everything has gone, or is going.
============This is making me think ‘virtual desktop’=========
Virtual desktop on steroids. Consider sitting at one table, with a family member to your left, a friend to your right, and all three of you are using the exact same computer, all logged in doing very different things with your own keyboards, your own mice, and your own monitors. (see the picture and video I posted above)
-—————It almost makes the PC itself obsolete for most uses.-—————
Not at all. All three of you(your friend, family member, and yourself) are connected to one single PC. A laptop would easily work as well, hardware limitations notwithstanding.
-——————To setup another computer———————
Not a whole different computer. These are not stand alone thin clients. They’re very different.
To my knowledge, USB has a limit of 127 devices.
So your maximal end result could be 127 users all using one computer. That’s a lot of tables, keyboards, mice, and monitors. But you would save quite a pretty penny by eliminating 126 towers! Just make sure you invest in twin 8 core opterons. :-)