Dual User Windows PC

cojsl writes "Anandtech reviews the Jetway Magic Twin small form-factor PC that allows two simultaneous users on one Windows PC. The article mentions a mobo only option too."

I want the opposite...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to be able to use multiple computers via one user interface...

Wondering about licensing and grammar

[The I Shing]

I wonder how licensing will work for software installed on such a computer.

Will software makers insist that multiple licenses be bought for software that will be used by two users simultaneously?

And speaking of things being equal, I feel a Grammar Raid coming on...

"Magic Twin looks like a pretty unique solution..." the article says. Why do people insist on qualifying the word unique? Something is either unique or it isn't. An object cannot be "somewhat unique" or "almost totally unique." The word means one of a kind, and without equal. Something either has equals or it doesn't.

Grammar Slammer Bammer slam Igor tomorrow, for sure!

Taking a step back?

[mizidymizark]

Is it me, or is this returning to the days of dumb terminals? I think this is practical for some of the suggestions they had, ie. 2 children doing homework, but this is hardly a revolutionary idea.

Ad?

[Gyorg_Lavode]

What's it mean when there is an advertisment for the box being reviewed right beside the review?...

Unique? No... but legal questions?

[NitroWolf]

It's not unique. This has been around for more than a decade. I remember an add on card for sale in CompUSA that allowed this exact thing.

I never bought one, because I never had a need. But this is no unique, in so far as allowing to people to use the same box via a mouse and keyboard. It's kinda nice to see this functionality updated, but it's certianly not unique.

However, it leads to some legal question for software licenses.

Most EULA's say you can run "One instance of the software on ONE machine at a time" - how does this apply to this machine? If you run two instances of a software package on the same machine, are you in violation of the EULA? My gut reation is yes... but will they really care?

Depends. If it's not popular, this obviously won't be inforced, but if this is something that becomes more popular, will we start to see software that won't let you run multiple instances of it at once?

The article says you can play head to head VGA games against each other... but how does that work if you're only running one instance, or are you running two instances?

This just doesn't seem all that practical for game playing. For productivity apps, though, this could be killer for cube rats. IT could deploy one machine for two cubes, cutting your hardware budget, and support in half!

Lots of questions, both technical and legal need to be worked out before this could really take off. Couple that with the fact that previous attempts at this didn't seem to fly, for whatever reason, it makes me wonder if this isn't already a dead technology.

Big *TWO* users?

[fishbowl]

> who | wc -l
488
> uptime
2:27pm up 54 days, 21:23, 488 users, load average: 0.09, 0.18, 0.23

Re:Terminal Server

[w3weasel]

sadly, this is a kludge... specialized motherboard required... meaning the MoBo is actually siamese twins sharing non-critical chips (err.. organs).

The Mainframe is BACK!

[code addict]

Am I the only one that thinks this sounds like a mini version of a mainframe w/terminals? Maybe that's the next trend in computing, one PC per household, with multiple terminals for each family member!

First we have unix on mainframes, then Windows on PCs, and now we're moving back to Unix on mainframes again... ;)

could developers....

[zogger]

..use this? Be compiling and what not on one side, running the compiled code or working on writing on the other? Seems like one practical use. Or having one of the sides be for casually being on the net, while the other side is more open in admin mode for working, or are they both as vulnerable?

no, didn't RTA.

forget the licensing issues...

[No. 24601]

this is one of the most useless ideas out there. I don't see any reason for people to purchase hw so they can use the same Windows box. PCs are sufficiently cheap right now that you're better off buying two and hooking them up over ethernet. You can still share files, share apps, etc. but crashes will affect only one user rather than two. Windows is not a multi-user system... it was designed for one user, and when it comes down to it XP is just a hack for multiple profiles.

A real solution, that's already been mentioned here, is having one Linux box and setting up multiple desktops with VNC. That's if you absolutely must combine your systems or want to have apps installed on one setup. You can have as many dumb terminals as you want hooked into that machine.

Making a machine multi-user is a software problem not a hardware one and this idea will FAIL.

SunBlade 2500 with two users and two keyboards

[maitas]

Actually sun's SunBlade 2500 workstation can be used by two users simoultaneously, with two keyboards and two graphics boards sharing resources! (Solaris 9 and up only)

Can be done with Linux, on (some) commodity HW

[slk]

In short, see http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/multiuser/ [puc-rio.br]for the XFree86 patches.

I have this working (and working quite well) with the following hardware configuration:

Asus A7V600 in an Antec Sonata case
AMD Barton 2500+, 1GB RAM
3 40GB ATA disks

First user:
Matrox AGP G450 dual, with two heads, using Xinerama, PS/2 keyboard and rodent

Second user:
ATI Radeon 7000 PCI, one head, and with a USB keyboard and rodent

(OS is Fedora Core 1, with a patched X server)

It's fast, stable, quiet (the Sonata is a really nice case), and environmentally friendly (half the power, solid waste, etc. of having two PCs)

The only real issue is that switching sound between the two 'sides' is currently manual (either plug/unplug speakers, or a switchbox, or a splitter)

Re:Can someone please tell me...

[Vengeance]

Ummm, what's the difference?

This is restricted to only two users, isn't portable across a network to other machines, requires rather specialized hardware, and will cost you money.

Oh yes, and let us not forget the BSOD!

Yup, I think that about covers it.

Paired

[Anonymous Coward]

"For MS Office a license is required for each per seat instance. SO, two users in Word requires two licenses."

Ok, so it's per-seat. Is Visual C++ per seat, and what implications does this have for extreme programming?

This post is meant to be funny. I don't care about extreme programming.

I have been trying to do this for ages...

[lga]

...but I see no need for a special motherboard.

I have a laptop which obviously has it's own keyboard, trackpad and LCD - that's the first user. I also have a second monitor plugged in, and a USB keyboard and mouse. It seems to me that if the software could cope with it, a second person should be able to use the computer at the same time.

Unfortunately I haven't got the second monitor working under Linux, (crappy drivers from VIA) otherwise it would be simple to run another X server linked to the external devices. Windows runs the second monitor OK, but it doesn't have any way to run it independantly of the main user.

I have ended up using an old SGI Indigo to run programs on the laptop over X for the second user, which doesn't always work with modern X programs.

Re:Watch out for the licensing issues here

[dustman]

I remember reading that the original arguments in favor of software licenses was this:

Computer code is protected under copyright, every time you run a program, it is being copied from your hard drive (or other storage medium) into the computer memory. So, you are not allowed to do this (you are not the copyright holder) by default, and by agreeing to the license you are allowed to make the copy (just like the GPL, conceptually).

From the above post:

I know many softwares of mine have claims that only one person may use it on one machine at one time.

It would be interesting to take a similiar literal interpretation of law/agreement to note that on a single processor machine, only one instance of a program is ever running at the same time... The machine is just switching back and forth quite often :)

MS does indeed require multiple licenses...

[Anonymous Coward]

We looked at this kind of technology (dual user and quad user desktop systems) and asked the hardware salesrep about software licensing and he was quite adamant about the ** "single copy of the software runs just perfectly fine" and kept skirting the question about the legality. While he was in my bosses office, my boss called our MS Licensing gestapo on the speaker phone (we have a special volume license agreement with MS, survived an audit and thus have a ummm, errr.... shall we call it an "intimate" relationship with this goon). Mr. Gestapo was real curious about these multiuser PC's and desired to know more about who all might have already bought some of them. The hardware rep started getting really antsy, concluded his demo rather abruptly and left.

** Yep, the software technically runs just fine and dandy... but then again a Windows 2000 server for which you only bought 5 CALS will happily share files and printers for a 1000 workstations too.