[ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Mission Statement / Business Model

[Charles Marcus]

Some very excellent points, Jeff - but this is what I have been saying, and
why I have been pushing LTSP (www.ltsp.org) so much.  They have already
*done* it.  You can use 486 machines with 8MB of RAM, and it works very well
as an X-Terminal.

Set up a powerful server, and this 486 can now run StarOffice 6, Evolution
and Mozilla (or Galeon, or whatever) at very acceptable speeds.

Now you only have one machine for each 50 - 100 workstations.

Also, if you have a few people who need to run legacy/M$ apps, just set up a
Samba/Tarantella/Win4Lin app server, and voila, instant access (even over
*dial-up* connections) to Quickbooks, etc.  Demos would be a simple matter
of setting up a server.

This would eliminate most if not all of the objections.

Charles

> From: jeff hubbs [mailto:hbbs at mediaone.net]
> Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 11:15 AM
> To: Irv Mullins
> Cc: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Mission Statement / Business
> Model
>
> A capability that I personally want to develop involves the
> creation of business-type IT resources utilizing older PC
> systems (for the sake of discussion, I'll call "old"
> anything that predates the PIII).  Several things drive me
> in this direction.

<snip>

> Anyway, my point - and I do have one - is that when
> developing IT resources for an organization, something
> needs to be done to preserve and/or maximize returned
> value.  This means that if a company presents an office
> full of perfectly functional desktop machines that
> happen to be P90s, then a solution that calls for the
> replacement of the P90s with 1.5GHz P4s or what have you
> is no solution at all, even if you could get the cost of
> the new machines very low.
>
> Acknlowledging that StarOffice on a P90 is probably not
> pleasant, thoughts must turn to remote execution and
> treating the desktop machine like an X terminal, perhaps
> going so far as to eliminate disk drives at the desktop
> altogether.  If you can achieve this, you wind up
> trivializing the desktop hardware, making it highly
> interchangeable and disposable.    Thoughts turn to making
> very cost-effective and robust file servers and application
> servers.
>
> So, if this "cooperative" wants to offer something that
> would really impress the typical business owner, come up
> with a pre-engineered solution that primarily utilizes
> existing hardware of most any age and covers 90% of the
> company's IT activity right out of the box.  I think that
> among all of us, we can probably agree on what the final
> result should look like and make it so that it can be
> ported to all kinds of hardware.  Companies that utilize
> this shouldn't expect to get away with paying nothing for
> hardware - if there isn't a decent server with hot-swappable
> disk drives, then one has to be bought or built - but, my
> gosh, compared to the money that companies are paying now
> for the pretty boxes from Dell, etc. and the MS tax, how
> bad can that be?
>
> - Jeff



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