Submitted by “Back in November, we officially announced a new Windows product called Windows MultiPoint Server 2010. Today we are launching Windows MultiPoint Server around the world. Windows MultiPoint Server is available for purchase through OEMs and Microsoft Academic Volume Licensing customers on March 1, for schools and educational institutions (mainly for use in classrooms, labs and libraries).”
After 25 years we finally made it back to terminals.
<Sarcasm>
So Microsoft launches this about 15 years after the thin client fiasco. The only vendor that pulled it off (in schools, mainly), and without much success, was Sun. (By the way, the thin client concept in this sense, came from Larry Ellison…)
Everybody else is talking about “the cloud”, so I guess MS will launch their distributed computing model around 2025.
</Sarcasm>
This has nothing to do with thin client. This is multi-monitor, multiple keyboards and mice connected to a single PC, with a separate session run on each monitor. No networking, no client configuration, etc. Much simpler. I think that’s a great idea.
It sounds a lot like this:
http://www.novell.com/partnerguide/product/200920.html
It may or may not be a good idea, but one thing it certainly isn’t is an original idea.
http://www2.userful.com/press/microsoft-plays-catch-up-linux-virtua…
Microsoft Multipoint is 7 years late to this market, 750,000 seats behind the competition, and the competition’s price is just $69 per seat.
Edited 2010-02-25 13:35 UTC
Well, we have Sun Thin Clients (Sunrays) here at university and they work remarkably well. We have literally hundreds of them employed. The CS department’s Sunrays are attached to two 16 core machines and some other less powerful ones, running Debian GNU/Linux.
The clients are balanced between these servers at login time. If you use a smart card (like European ATM cards) you can even take your session with you to any other sunray.
I havent started testing it myself yet, but after years of using this: http://ncomputing.com/Default.aspx
I am curious how well MS’s solution works. I hope well because that would simplify 1 aspect of my job a bit.
I can’t seem to find out if there is any replication capability? Or ability to view files across a cluster, so you could drill down from a parent cluster to a machine/class within it and onwards to individual accounts. If not then running existing AD networks would seem to be easier.
This is something new?
Yawn……
More great technological ideas churning out of Redmond these days…..
Must be a slow news day……
Thanks to Microsoft!!