[LINK] Computers for schools more than hardware

[Tom Worthington]

At 01:07 PM 21/02/2008, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
>On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>>Cost one computer per student for each school, with support. My 
>>estimate for a minimal setup is $500 for a Zonbu type thin client 
>>(or ASUS type Laptop),
>
>What about Sunray? These are very thin and don't cost much at all. ...

The Sunrays start at about $US249.00, but seem to be very thin thin 
clients and to that price you need to add a monitor and a remote 
application server to drive it 
<http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2/specs.xml#anchor3>. For about 
$US100 more you can get enough memory and processing power to store 
and run applications locally.

>laptops or traditional computers have lots of moving parts that 
>require tech support.  ...

I expect we will see a continuum between thin clients and standalone 
computers. Low price, low power laptops and desktop will be made with 
no moving parts by using a low power processor and flash memory. 
Don't add much memory and you have a thin client, add more memory and 
you have something which can boot on its own, run applications but 
still relies on a network connection for data storage. Plug in a disk 
drive and you have an independent computer.

But I expect almost no one will want a completely network independent 
computer. It doesn't make sense to store important information in a 
desktop computer which can be lost, stolen, or broken.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU