Preparing For Life After the PC 636
New submitter Doctor_Jest links to a recent I, Cringely column, in which Cringely "is speculating how the world will look when the 'Post-PC' era is in full swing." He makes the case that in just a few upgrade cycles, extensible phones and other devices, coupled with remotely stored data, could replace most of today's conventional PCs — but also admits he thought this transition would have already happened.
Re:Meh ... (Score:2, Informative)
You don't seem to have a grasp of how many people routinely use 3d graphics packages out there in the real world...
Re: 1 computer, multiple users, multiple displays (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't going to happen on Windows. Could finally be the year of Linux on the desktop, though. Windows EULA specifically prohibits one shared computer with multiple users without a license for each user.
Citation on that please.
Windows has the capability to have multiple users, with multiple passwords, built right in. I can't remember the last home PC I've had that hasn't had a separate user profile for every person in the house (plus guest). And they've never tried to extract more money out of me. Why would they put that option in there if it were illegal?
Back when I lived with my parents, there was one desktop computer shared by four people. Maybe this is a "youth of today" attitude- where it is now practically unthinkable that people might not have at least one computer each...
Re: 1 computer, multiple users, multiple displays (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. I just built a terminal server at work. 5 legal remote desktop users = 450.00 - 500.00 dollars. And that is not counting the OS, which must be a Server OS, or the hardware. You are easily looking at 1500.00 - 2000.00 for a legal 5 user remote desktop.
Make a copy of Office available on the Remote Desktop...need a license for each user. You sneeze right, you need a license for that.
There are several dirt cheap Citrix-like products: Check out http://www.thinstuff.com/ [thinstuff.com]
Now do a search to see if that product is legal. Well no, they are not. If you don't have a Remote Desktop User CAL for each user, it's in violation of Windows EULA. I just spent a lot of time researching this stuff.
You can even run thinstuff on XP. Works great. I tested it. Is it legal. No. On XP, you can't put in Remote Desktop CALs, so there is no way to make it legal, even if you used thingstuff and attempted to purchase legal CALs.