Some of the higher end thin clients are very pricey that you can buy a full blown desktop or laptop with the same price (or even cheaper). I'm thinking about getting a retired laptop (may still be faster than most of the thin clients) and install a flash based drive (USB thumb drive, PCMCIA flash card or solid state drive). Removing the battery, CDROM and LCD if the space is an issue. We can install a lot more applications than the thin clients while the power consumption should not make much difference. Any recommendation on this?
Thanks.
Using a laptop as a thin client
Moderators: Bill Smith, Pilot
ASUS EEE PC
Does anyone know how much power does the ASUS EEE PC use without the LCD panel? It has a 16GB solid state drive built in and can be a good candidate as a thin client. It's about $200 for a new/refurbished one and we can resell the LCD and battery and the total cost may be around $100. That's a pretty good thin client for the price.
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stroths
- Dan isn't smart enough to hire me
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Check out fatwallet.com or slickdeals.net in their hot deals section. You can often find an netbook for around $150. As for power usage, I am not sure but the atom based will be your best bet as they are designed for low power usage.
Regarding the battery, I would suggest leaving it in as a battery backup if your power goes down. Get a small UPS for your router and DSL/Cable modem and you will retain phone usage even if the power goes out.
Regarding the battery, I would suggest leaving it in as a battery backup if your power goes down. Get a small UPS for your router and DSL/Cable modem and you will retain phone usage even if the power goes out.
You might also want to consider a thin client laptop. I recently bought on eBay a Neoware m100 for only $58 including shipping (missing a power supply, but I bought a generic on ebay that works great for $9 including shipping) it is just as big and heavy as a regular laptop, but in fact is a thin client with XPe, 512Mb RAM and 512Mb flash memory.
There a a number listed on eBay for some pretty big prices, but there are two currently (July 7) for under $50. Does not seem to be much interest in these things. Likely because it kind of big for use as just a dedicated magic jack computer, and is not useful as a regular full function laptop.
(Or maybe the magic jack thin client community has not discovered these yet...)
I also saw a Wyse X90 go on eBay for $59 (I had bid $49....) It is very similar to the Neoware, but has a faster processor, I think.
Searching on eBay for just "XPe" seems to turn up some oddball stuff that led me to this.
Just a thought...
--jayhawk
There a a number listed on eBay for some pretty big prices, but there are two currently (July 7) for under $50. Does not seem to be much interest in these things. Likely because it kind of big for use as just a dedicated magic jack computer, and is not useful as a regular full function laptop.
(Or maybe the magic jack thin client community has not discovered these yet...)
I also saw a Wyse X90 go on eBay for $59 (I had bid $49....) It is very similar to the Neoware, but has a faster processor, I think.
Searching on eBay for just "XPe" seems to turn up some oddball stuff that led me to this.
Just a thought...
--jayhawk