Windows Terminal Server in Public Education <cringe>

[Robert Green]

--- Ray Strode <halfline at hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
> > I would love to help. I am currently getting all
> my old 486's
> > ready to be the terminals and trying to find a box
> good enough to
> > be the server.
> 
> Honestly, I don't think 486s would be ideal for this
> situation.  Such
> a setup requires lots of network bandwidth and most
> 486s are limited
> to the ISA bus.  Even 10baseT ISA nics can't go
> 10baseT. They are just
> 10baseT compatible.  In addition, things will
> probably still seem
> sluggish because of the speed of the video card. 
> Even VL cards can't
> really match up to the junkiest PCI counterparts. 
> What this all adds
> up to is slow network + slow video = unsuitable for
> running graphical
> environments remotely. 
> 
> My opinion--could be wrong...Please don't flame.
> 
> --Ray Strode

It really depends on what types of things they will be
doing -- I have had very good, useable X terminals and
even light servers using 486 machines with decent
video cards and reasonable (32 MB and up) RAM. Unless
they're planning to render Babylon 5 episodes on their
LAN, they should be able to get a very respectable
setup using these low-cost machines. Particularly
useful for a demo project, too. "These are all
obselete machines that you can usually get free as
donations. If you actually have a budget for new
hardware, this setup can REALLY COOK!" is a nice
seller to go along with a demonstration, I would say. 

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