OT: Thin Clients, Anybody know anything Options

[Qarl]

Looking to upgrade one of our offices. It has 30 PCs that are about 5 years old.

Everybody runs the same crap.

Microsoft office
Adobe Acrobat
Internet Explorer
Terminal Emulaton programs
Anti-virus software.

Looking at thin-clients as a replacement solution (less IT management of each PC).

How does software licensing work? I know you have to have the terminal server with enough client access licenses for each machine?

What if I wanted to run Microsoft Office? How does licensing work? Do you buy one license (since you only really running one copy?), or do you have to have some sort of user license of each terminal running it?

Same question for other applications.

Anybody with any real world experience?

Thanks.

[SirAndy]

QUOTE (anthony @ Jan 20 2005, 09:30 PM)

Thin clients don't really make for any less IT management. One doesn't need to rebuild a workstation that frequently and to do it one usually uses cloning software like Ghost. Thin clients also aren't going to save you any money in software licensing costs. If you really want to save yourself on IT management costs then switch to Macs if you can.

i agree with the first part and disagree with the second.

in any event, you won't be making your (IT) life any easier ...
quite the opposite, actually. i found well maintained workstations with their own software copies much less of an headache.
plus, if one goes down, the rest of the office can still work. if your central "software hub" goes down, the whole office gets a day off ...

just my 2 cents ...
(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/type.gif) Andy

PS: if you *really* want to make your job easier, spent some money on computer training for the users. i found 95% of the time, the problems are due to users not knowing what the hell they're doing.
like the guy that deleted his windows system directory and tried to blame it on microsoft ...
or the IT director (ha!) from wells fargo that spelled his email www.bruce.hislastname@wellsfargo.com and couldn't figure out why people couldn't send him email ... (this is not a joke!)