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Transmeta HP Portables Hardware

HP Introduces Transmeta Thin Clients 203

Posted by Hemos from the getting-the-new-machines-on dept.
prostoalex writes "HP will announce the T5500 and T5300 thin clients on Monday at the TechEX show in New York City, which use the 733-MHz and 533-MHz versions of Transmeta's TM5800 CPU. Prices range from $599 to $629."
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HP Introduces Transmeta Thin Clients More

HP Introduces Transmeta Thin Clients

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  • PC vs thin client (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:36AM (#6964375)
    Wait, I can buy a regular PC for less... what gives?

    • Or an X-Box, surely? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Channard ( 693317 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:48AM (#6964532) Journal
      Which also runs at 733Mhz and can be made to run Linux, to act as a web server and a myriad of other apps. Granted, it's not a 'thin' client so much as a 'who's eaten all the pies' client, in physical size at least. But it's still quite compact compared to tower PCs. Plus MS supposedly loses money on each box sold which should surely encourage some enterprising admin would set up an X-Box powered office.
      • 750$ will get you a p4 2.53ghz, 512mb ram, cdrw, and 40gb HD all in a business SFF chasis, from Compaq-HP. Well, its actuall a Compaq designed PC, but it has the HP logo on it.
        • But a p4 2.53 GHz requires a CPU fan that's loud as hell. The Trasmeta probably doesn't. However, your point is made-- you can assemble something equivalent for half the cost.
          • Loud as hell? not so. There are two fans in it, the cpu fan and the chasis fan. The chasis fan is near silent and the p4 fan make a low hum. Not even a whine. My GF FX has a louder fan than the stock p4 fans.
      • It is a lot of work to mod each Xbox. The more large an office I run the more buying complete machiens make sense from a staffing perspective. Modding X-box would run counter to the whole thin client idea since the whole point of a thin client is to reduce admin work. Not to mention the fact that you get no warranty and X-Box will put out a lot more heat than either the crusoe or often used Geodes will.

        A good thin client on the other hand will have no moving parts(no fans, no hds) and be setup out of the
        • You can now put linux on an Xbox without making any hardware modifications using mechassault or something. Hence your warranty will not be voided. The REAL problem with this is that the Xbox does not support VGA out, so unless you're going to buy each station a HD television, it's not going to be good for much, and even if you do the resolution will be woefully inadequate.
    • And add in Etherboot and you've got a thin client!

    • Re: PC v. Thin Client (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MuParadigm ( 687680 ) <jgabriel66@yahoo.com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @12:30PM (#6964975) Homepage Journal

      Well, you can get a Thin Client for as little as $200-$400. I just bought several for one of my clients at about $650 a pop, but that was because I wanted them to be capable of Windows emulation and X Windows.

      The real savings is in support costs, though. With regualar PC's and hard drives, the initial costs to setup and secure the workstation are much higher, and even then the users are always screwing things up with Bonzia Buddy, assorted screensavers, etc. Using thin clients with Linux or Terminal Server really cuts down on support costs.

      Anyway, the statement in that article which I found odd was that HP was the leader in the Thin Client market. Everytime I have to set clients up with more TC's, I research the market again, and Wyse is always the best deal. Frankly, I thought they were in the lead for the thin client market, though I may be wrong.

      • In an environment which locks down the desktops to keep the users from installing additional software, Bonzai buddies, and all that other drek, your support costs are not substantially different between cheap PCs and thin clients.

        The problems show up when you have to deal with users demanding access they don't need. With a thin client, you tell them it can't be done and they believe you. With a cheap PC, they know it can be done and some PHB always forces you to make an exception for that one user. An

  • Uh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NightSpots ( 682462 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:37AM (#6964383) Homepage
    733 MHz, and I'm supposed to celebrate?

    Transmeta missed the boat. Even in thin clients, they're underpowered. At 733 MHz, even low IPC won't help.

    Transmeta was a good company, but they didn't get their product to market in time.

    • Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgranade ( 702534 ) <cgranadeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:42AM (#6964449) Homepage Journal
      Clockrates of different processors don't directly compare. I mean, the Dreamcast had a 200MHz processor, and went faster than PCs for several years. My Athlon XP 1.8GHz is faster than my P4 2GHz. The P3 1GHz was faster than the P4 1.4GHz. So, 733MHz may be a lot more than you think. Besides, the only reason that seems underpowered is due to bloatware. If it were Linux installed...

      • Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Hoser McMoose ( 202552 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:07PM (#6965961)
        Very true, at 733MHz, the Transmeta chips they are using are NO WHERE CLOSE to being as fast as a PIII or Athlon of the same clock speed. In reality, the performance of these chips have a tough time matching 400MHz Celeron processors, let alone anything that has been sold by Intel or AMD in the last 3 years.

        For a thin client though, this might be enough computing power. A thin client really doesn't do a heck of a lot other than display simple graphics. Power consumption (and therefore heat produced) is also quite low, though a ULV mobile Celeron would offer comperable power consumption. The real reason why HP went with these chips is because they are cheap. I have to wonder why they didn't go for a VIA C3 instead though. Similar power consumption, low cost and much more widely available/better supported chipsets.

      • Re:Uh (Score:5, Funny)

        by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:40PM (#6966321)
        And a 230 Mhz K6 can't run super nintendo games as quickly as the original console, despite having a much higher clock speed. The trick: the SNES had lots of hardware acceleration. And how does this apply to the discussion? It doesn't. Ladies and gentleman I am not making any sense. Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly little monkey.
      • In practice this argument can only take you so far! (Probably why your parent said "even low IPC won't help", though I think he meant HIGH IPC=instructions per cycle).

        And since a P3-700(M) is roughly twice [pooterland.com] as fast as a Crusoe 800, raising the IPC argument is just grasping at straws. (Check out the Fujitsu B-series 2562 vs. the Lifebook P2110 on that link).

    • Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smatt-man ( 643849 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:43AM (#6964462)
      For a thin client 733 MHz is almost over powered. Remember, all it has to do is run Win CE or embeded Linux. The keyword being thin which means the server does the processing.

    • Re:Uh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by VEGETA_GT ( 255721 )
      I disagree
      Remember they came out with their original processors when the race to hit 1ghz was still on the go. So they where in the right MHz area then. Though they have not done much to keep up since then. What happened tot hem is they lost their contract with IBM, Sony did not make many laptops and there processors never got really well pushed in the mobile computing market as they should have been. It is a great idea of a chip, but things just never went right for them.

    • Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:53AM (#6964575)
      I have a slew of 733mhz computers with 128MB at the office that run Windows 2000 extremely well. My friends and I decided a while back that 600mhz is about all you need with any modern operating system. Beyond that you're just gaming.

      It's a thin client, man. Web, email, word processing, maybe play some tunes or desktop games.

      • Re:Uh (Score:2)

        by oolon ( 43347 )
        My Xvid encoding says otherwise! If I wanna turn all the features on I geta whooping 3 frames a second (cos its 2 pass thats really 1.5 frames a second) out of my 2.4Ghz PIV system. There is still some place for processor improvement in my book. Even decoding xvid would strugle on a 733, my Sony C1 picturebook can't handle decoding.

        James

        • Re:Uh (Score:3, Informative)

          by dabadab ( 126782 )
          "Even decoding xvid would strugle on a 733"

          My 500MHz Celeron plays anything without getting anywhere near 100% CPU load. I guess it's mostly a matter of the video card - my Matrox G400 handles some of the stuff (scaling, maybe colorspace conversion).
          And of course you DON'T do Xvid encoding on a thin client just as much as you don't do it on an X terminal (what a thin client basically is)
        • Silly silly...

          "all the features" would mean you're turning on stuff that are totally useless or aren't worth the effort to calculate out... 10% time for 0.1% improvement in average quantizer just isn't worth it for most people. And decoding XviD takes about 500mhz (Celeron).

          Don't blame the software or the hardware for what is clearly PEBKAC.
        • Encoding, sure. But my 733Mhz VIA C3 doesn't go above ~70% on decoding, and it even has crappy integrated video [pcchips.com.tw]. Of course, it was also less than half this price, and in Canadian dollars... not very thin, though...
      • --Yeah, and back in the day I thought "This 286-12 is all I'll ever need!"

        *BZZT!* Wrong...

        --Faster processors are also good for compiling kernels and compressing things with gzip / bzip2.

    • Re:Uh (Score:3, Informative)

      by diz ( 10034 )
      Uh, maybe you didn't notice that the article said that the 1GHz models have already been on the market for a while and they were releasing slower models. One would expect that these models would be cheaper than the TM5700 clients that are 1GHz and *already on the market* for some time.

      With the amount of effort I see people put into making ultra quiet computers, you'd think something like this might actually do well. I'm tired of my own office sounding like a wind tunnel, and I've considered many times m

    • Parent is pure Troll.

      1. Thin client apps are not designed to be client-cpu intensive, that's why they're using thin clients! Hello?

      2. Comparing a Crusoe clock speeds to Intel/AMD (which is also asinine) is worse than comparing a G5 to a P4.

      3. 99% of your mainstream thin client apps will BLAZE with this Crusoe chip. It's no secret to /.ers that you can run word proc., email, spreadsheets, with much less than 733 mhz. 333 celeron anyone?

      4. Judging Transmeta dead without regard for the upcoming Efficeon [efficeon.com] is

      • Re:Uh (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Delirium Tremens ( 214596 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:11PM (#6966008) Journal
        ...many major analyst forecasts which see TMTA hitting 2.50 in the next year.
        Well, with this announcement, this might even happen today:
        TMTA [nasdaq.com] $2.39 +0.48 +25.13% 12,305,832

      • Re:Uh (Score:2)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 )

        IIRC, Transmeta chip performance was something that depended on its learning how to optimize for a specific task.

        Existing benchmarks tended to emphasize how fast each of several tasks were accomplished once.

        So Transmeta's offerings tend to look worse than they might be in use, day to day.

  • $600 for a thin client? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:37AM (#6964388)
    When I can go buy a cheap $129 Via C3 motherboard with integrated everything, slimline case, memory, keyboard, mouse and flat panel for $500, why should I consider buying this thin client? Once you get away from the standard PC mentality, the costs do become increasingly important...

    • Re:$600 for a thin client? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:47AM (#6964516) Homepage
      Basically, you shouldn't buy it.

      A company might, however. These units cost about the same, or a little more, than a standard PC. Unlike a standard PC, however, they are geared from start to be slave units to a server. The user can mess up far less on one of these than they can on a PC, and any software updates and other administration happens on the server and not on the individual desktop units. A user can use any client anywhere; nobody's locked to one particular machine (and replacing a faulty unit is done in minutes, with no need to mess around with backup restoration). And, of course, if you need more capacity, you only need to upgrade the server backend, so these have a lifespan that is a good deal longer than a standard PC.

      The decrease in administration hassles, the improved security, the decreased power consumption and the interchangeability all add up to a pretty compelling advantage compared to putting a full-blown PC on every desk - for a medium to large organization.

      • Thing is though, any hardware can be a diskless terminal as long as it supports booting network or using a boot rom. So, that old weird PCI AMD 486 laying around can get a boot rom-based ethernet card, and voila! Xterm. Many new ethernet cards support it without needing the rom. It's a lot cheaper to continue with the "upgrade the backend" mentality if the front end user machine is even cheaper, and like another poster said, a PII can be found surplus for $50 in many cities, in quantity, with identical
        • However, the casing and the noise is a big deal. For example, if they manage to fit the whole thing in a completely silent chassis that is very, very small, you then buy yourself real estate - meaning that each user has more desk space - that's something not easily purchased.

          In addition if they don't have fans, it both keeps the noise down to silent (which enhances productivity) and is one less thing to break and need replacing, making the # of movable parts 0.

          Finally, if the Transmeta processor is energ
          • how to reduce fan noise and wasted desk-space? put your computer on the floor.
            • This is still space that could be used for something else, and it makes a bigger cable mess.

              As for the fans, they still make noise and still break.

              And the whole thing uses more electricity. We often forget this has a cost. I forget where, but I once saw the numbers as a result of consolidating a roomful of servers onto an IBM mainframe - they save $250,000 a year in electricity costs. Paying attention to these things can find your company money where it didn't think it had any.
      • These units cost about the same, or a little more, than a standard PC. Unlike a standard PC, however, they are geared from start to be slave units to a server.

        Actually, they cost about twice as much as a mini-atx. Don't forget that UNIX (and therefor Linux) was always designed to operate with dumb terminals (thin clients) connected to a centralized host. The X11 protocol was also designed to operate distributed among network connected hosts. It's not even that hard to set up.

        Even Windows these days has "
    • Also, this place [disklessworkstations.com] has headless units for $350, and they are ready to run as LTSP clients.

      Even then, you can get older PII class systems used for less than $50 USD, which would run just fine as X terms, with a decent monitor and GFX card.
    • I am actually testing the VIA M10000 motherboard right now for a potential office rollout. Even with their 1GHz proc's, they will rival most machines for basic word processing, e-mail, and client-server apps. I can put one together for $500 cdn, and it will handle everthing the office wants it to, for 1/3 of the cost of a new PC.
    • Tech support.

      When something on your home-brew PC dies, you're responsible for diagnosing the problem and acquiring the parts necessary to fix it.

      HP's tech support is notoriously bad (I've dealt with it in the past week) but at least you can hand off the problem to someone else. I don't think you'd appreciate being the only point of contact for 100 home-brew thin clients' tech support.

    • Re:$600 for a thin client? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tashanna ( 409911 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @12:46PM (#6965167)
      This is Slashdot.Why would anyone look at the HP Website [compaq.com] and check prices.

      The 533 MHz = $349
      The 733 MHz = $369

  • Whatever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:39AM (#6964403)
    When are we going to see the Transmeta chips' unique code morphing technology used for something OTHER than just making unexceptional x86 clones with questionable benefit over just a normal intel/amd chip?

    It's nice to see Transmeta doing SOMETHING, but it still looks like they've been running themselves in circles since the day they first used a product.

    Never mind the PC world for a minute. Is Transmeta having ANY luck selling their chips for use in embedded systems?

    • Re:Whatever (Score:4, Interesting)

      by pope1 ( 40057 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:48AM (#6964534) Homepage
      Yes, they have had luck in embedded systems.

      Checkout this company site [rlx.com].

      They use transmeta chips in thier blade servers (multiple physical computers in one enclosure, for super high density computing).

      Heres a direct link [rlx.com] to the model 1000t, pretty neat design, and a company worth watching.
      • A blade server is not an embedded system in the classic sense. Embedded hardware doesn't act like an ordinary computer, it behaves like an appliance. For instance, the ECU in your fuel-injected automobile is an embedded system.
    • Because there is no point of emulating eg. the Motorola MPC range of embedded PowerPC or ARM chips because those chips have low power anyway and probably better performance at the clock speed.

      The only thing going for them is the ability to use the PC platform for *some* embedded applications but even that is a moot point since you can target linux to lots of embedded processors. Unless I had something that needed MS Windows I would n't even bother looking at them, I would most probably be able to find a M

  • Wrong pricing (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:39AM (#6964408) Homepage
    The submitter misread the article; those prices are for the TM5700, which HP already sells.

    It says right at the bottom of the article that the prices for the new units have not been announced.

    Jay (=

  • What's the deal. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:40AM (#6964427)
    Thin clients are an excellent, though not new, idea. One of the big advantages of thin clients is cost. A thin client device that supports the RDP or Citrix ICA protocols can be had for just a couple of hundred dollars but, if you want X Term support the cost is through the roof. I want to know why the X capable clients cost so much more than the Winterm clients. I can't see any real justification for this.

  • Specs and Diagrams here: (Score:4, Informative)

    by watanabe ( 27967 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:40AM (#6964432)
    http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/1174 6_ca/11746_ca.PDF

    The specs look like this is aimed at a corporate market? Strange since a whitebox computer would be cheaper. I suppose power consumption, etc. are all important. The T5500 comes with 128mb of RAM, and the 733mhz Crusoe 5800 processor, runs Windows CE and IE 6, and supports Citrix, etc.

    I still think I'd prefer a whitebox with no hard drive running LTSP.

  • When will they give up? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jbellis ( 142590 ) * <jonathan@carnage ... m minus math_god> on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:41AM (#6964434) Homepage
    It's nice to see transmeta getting some press but how many times do we have to try thin clients before realizing they peaked in the early 90s and probably aren't coming back?

    Most recently, the sun ray [sun.com] is about half the price, has cool take-your-session-anywhere technology, and last I heard isn't selling like hotcakes. So either HP knows something I don't or this is just more evidence of clueless management...

    • Re:When will they give up? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lxy ( 80823 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:54AM (#6964582) Journal
      I am by no means an industry analyst, but here's my observations.

      We started off here at work with a System 36 and dumb terminals at everyone's desk. Everyone got their work done, and aside from hardware problems, there was no need to get up and walk to somone's desk. If anyone had problems, it was all centralized. All my work was done from my desk.

      We then moved off dumb terminals and replaced everything with PCs. Trips to people's desk are frequent (probably 20 a day) and the rest of the time is spent building replacement PCs. Users store their own data, and if their drive crashes without a backup, they're SOL. How do you get a user to backup their data on a regular basis? Got me.

      Now we start looking at server based solutions like Citrix and $300 Wyse terminals on the desk. Hmm.. minimized trips to the desk, all management centralized, hey, didn't we used to have that?

      It looks to me like we have a trend. We got off the diskless/helpless workstations in favor of robust, useful boxes. Now we're heading back that helpless box stage and centralize our configuration, installation, and data. I predict that diskless will always be, and in fact will be favorable in reduced admin costs. because of that I welcome a market that is competitive at the thin client level.
      • You are telling me you can't setup some form of a network imaging backup system? You know a large storage area network that would image the user's HD'd on a regular basis?

        • Re:When will they give up? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Lxy ( 80823 )
          I can rattle off a list about ways of going about it. The question is, how the hell do I backup 500 PCs in an efficient manner on a regular basis? I agree that there are some cool techniques (including the one you mentioned) but getting a setup that works well would take far more time than our current method. Not to mention that doesn't solve the original problem, user issues and hardware upgrade.

          Oh, and I should also mention that something like telling users to save their data on the server makes sense
      • I think it has to do with CPU speeds vs wire speeds.

        LAN networking stayed fairly steady at 1-10mbps shared until 100mbps Ethernet took off a few years ago. Easily fast enough to update text screens and to do simple GUIs. And back then it was cheaper to buy a big CPU instead of a desktop big enough to do the heavy duty stuff you have to allow for but which isn't the norm.

        But then wire speed stayed at 10mbps for a while and CPUs got cheaper while GUIs which needed this power got more common. Now it's harder
      • I understand your point. However I would like to point out another option. Why not just diskless clients? A mini-ITX board has enough power to run most office style applications. Just have it boot into Linux of if you must Windows across the network. Have all user data stored on the network. You have your centalized backup. For the helpdesk just install VNC.
      • It looks to me like we have a trend. We got off the diskless/helpless workstations in favor of robust, useful boxes. Now we're heading back that helpless box stage and centralize our configuration, installation, and data. I predict that diskless will always be, and in fact will be favorable in reduced admin costs. because of that I welcome a market that is competitive at the thin client level.

        Except that the "terminals" today have more power than the mainframe of back then. Yes, they're centralizing stora
      • In addition I predict, that in a decade or so, we'll be moving back to "robust, useful boxes" and then in another decade back to dummy terminals.

        It's kinda like "client/server", then "decentralized" then "client/server" then "decentralized" then "client/server" etc..

        History is good at repeating transitions between different computing paradigms and back..

    • PCs killed the thin client because they were cheap and powerful. A handful of PCs had way more processing power than a mainframe, cost far less, and required less special infrastructure. Now, machines that do what a mainframe did then, even adjusting for increased volumes of data, are once again priced into the realm of reason, so it makes sense to use them again. It's not that mainframes didn't make sense, it's that they priced themselves into obscurity. These days you can hook up multiple terabytes of sto

  • Go Transmeta! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pope1 ( 40057 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:42AM (#6964445) Homepage
    Its always great to see an underdog/specialty chip maker gain some market share, even if its in the mostly-corporate-lan-dominated arena of Thin-Clients.

    At least Sun Micro's "Sun Ray" system will get some much needed competition out of this.

    We use Sun Ray's here at work [nih.gov], and while they do thier job pretty admirably, they do have some quirky lock-up issues we haven't been able to resolve.

  • Price is incorrect (Score:5, Informative)

    by Llurien ( 658850 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:43AM (#6964460)
    The article actually says that the 5700 model which was allready sold by HP for some time has a price range of $599 to $629. The 5700 model uses the 1GHz version of the TM5800. The new thing is that models based on the lower speed processors are introduced, but no prices are known about those yet. I may be kicking in open doors here, but they probably will be lower.

  • In Other News... (Score:3, Funny)

    by I8TheWorm ( 645702 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:44AM (#6964479) Journal
    GM has announced a smaller, harder to drive vehicle than the small-mid sized cars. It has less power and room as well. It will sell, however, for slightly higher than other vehicles, as it will be cool to own, given a very high geek rating.

  • Perhaps for console apps (Score:4, Interesting)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... .com minus punct> on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:45AM (#6964486) Journal
    I have a Transmeta 533 in the form of a Sonic Blue frontpath surfpad.

    It is a wonderful toy, but too slow for human consumption, modern software just craaawls, and it only works as a surfpad via a thin and tuned Netscape 4.7. OOo is painfully slow. MP3 playback worked OK.

    The only use I can see for this kind of device, and I admit that it'd be enough for me, is for remote ssh administration of my servers with some music rocking in the headset.

    ssh runs just dandy on a 533 Mhz Crusoe. Anything with pretty pictures does _not_.

    • Re:Perhaps for console apps (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:48AM (#6964524)
      Hence the fact that it's a thin client. In other words, virtually none of the processing (apart from some basic drawing to the screen functions) is done locally. It's all done on some big server the user never has to see.
    • Hm, depends on what you want to do I guess. I used to run Mozilla and OOo and listen to mp3s/oggs on my AMD K6/233 just fine. For most work tasks, including office-type work, programming, and general internet tasks, that was enough power - and 533 MHz should be too. The only tasks requiring a >1GHz computer are modern games, video editing, and maybe 3D software. As a system for most daily work (unless you do lots of multimedia), anything from 200 to 1000 MHz serves just fine. My 1533 MHz desktop sits idl
      • True, 533Mhz should be enough, but somehow it's not, in the Crusoe version. Seriously: OOo just crawls so painfully it's unbearable, Mozilla takes 40 seconds to load (20 for the stripped-down Netscape 4.7), it's like working in treacle.

  • Pictures of T5500 and T5300 (Score:5, Informative)

    by ShadeARG ( 306487 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:46AM (#6964500)
    Pictures of the T5500 [niederer.ch] and T5300 [niederer.ch]. (German text)
  • You can get an NEC Powermate Eco, which also uses the Crusoe chip, for the same price ($600-650), with 256 MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. Oh, and a 15" LCD monitor in a compact design.

  • Larry Ellison failed twice. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:46AM (#6964512)
    Larry Ellison has tried to sell thin clients and failed. TWICE. Why does Carly think this will work?

    1: Take a failed business model.
    2: ???
    3: Profit
    • teo reasons:
      1) times are tight, and when looking at cost savings, thin clients are really the way to go.
      CHeaper to admin, cheaper to run, cheaper to replace on of these thena PC.
      Bear in mind these are overall costs. sure, you might be able ti get a PC for the same cost, but how much are you going to spend in man hours installing and updating software.

      2) easier to keep up to date when the next virus hits.

      Larry's timing was horrible.

  • Thin Client Prices (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brian Blessed ( 258910 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:50AM (#6964551)
    When I was setting up my LTSP-style arrangement at home, I shopped around a bit for clients. I already had an old Javastation Krups, but found it much to slow for heavy use.

    These thin clients are $599 to about $629, similar to the prices I found but I can't understand why companies make them so expensive. I decided to build my own using VIA mini-ITX boards for less than $300.

    It amazes me when companies fail to analyze why previous thin client computing initiatives haven't caught on, and put out thin clients that cost the same as a full desktop PC. My local bank (Barclay's) have replaced old X Terminals with Dell desktop PCs (P4s!) running Exceed, and I assume they chose this based on price.

    - Brian
    • My local bank (Barclay's) have replaced old X Terminals with Dell desktop PCs (P4s!) running Exceed, and I assume they chose this based on price.

      It's true that thin clients often seem overpriced for what they are, however, the working lifetime of them tends to be much more than your average PC. Longevity doesn't seem to count for much when buying.

      We have a few Exceed PCs used almost entirely as X-terminals but they are running on NT. Since NT is no longer supported, and they don't look like they are wort

    • I decided to build my own using VIA mini-ITX boards for less than $300.

      And I'm sure the time spent on repairing PC hardware, the electricity saved, etc., would be more than worth the added cost.

      My local bank (Barclay's) have replaced old X Terminals with Dell desktop PCs (P4s!) running Exceed, and I assume they chose this based on price.

      A local high-school replaced Macs with PCs running Windows. I assume they did this because Mac OS is horrible, and Windows is a wonderful operating system.

      Just goes to

  • Too Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:55AM (#6964597)
    We run mini-itx booting from compact flash...total cost 250 and boots in 10 seconds...

    Check out peewee linux....
    • If you could put linuxbios on a mini-itx system then you could netboot using kernel level autoconfiguration, and then kick over to another linux kernel.
      • Great idea except that I have 125 users log into a single desktop server all at the same time. Pusing the kernel to all of them at once would kill the network. This is the same reason I don't use ltsp, I opt insted to use just xdm with a local linux mini distro.

  • Or.. (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    Get a mini-ITX mother board running at 1 Ghz. Add solid state memory (CF) + video + monitor

    Silent fast-ish thin client $500

    Rus

  • Hey, Mini-ITX fanboys (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @12:02PM (#6964660) Journal
    For everyone complaining and bragging about how they built a mini-itx box for much cheaper, it's time for a whack from the clue by four.

    These are terminals, not stupid little computers shoved up an ET dolls ass.

    Terminals generally include monitor, keyboard and mouse, ready to plug and play.

    Thank you, that is all.
    • For everyone complaining and bragging about how they built a mini-itx box for much cheaper, it's time for a whack from the clue by four.

      These are terminals, not stupid little computers shoved up an ET dolls ass.

      Terminals generally include monitor, keyboard and mouse, ready to plug and play.

      Thank you, that is all.

      Bzzzt. Wrong answer!

      Monitors are almost always sold separately. Check out HP's site and you'll see them listed under "options and accessories". I've got an office full of monitors that'll
  • Or, you could go to Dell and get a Thick Client for the same price. $600 will get you a 2.2 Ghz box, with 256M ram, 15" flatscreen, 40 Gig HD. Comes with XP Home, or you could throw Mandrake 9.2 on there for free.

    • Re:alternative (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      then you get to install all the software($), set up a back-up program for each individule PC($$), and when the user screws up a setting, send somone to the desk to fix it($$$), then when a virus hits, you have to be sure their updated($), and each machine will have to be indivule scanned($$$$).

      get the picture?

      Now I would use one for the home, but for a lot of business, this is the way to go.
      • You can use it as a thin client. You just keep your options open. You should spend some of your ($$$$$$) on a spell/grammar check.

  • When Less Is More (Score:5, Insightful)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @12:10PM (#6964763) Journal

    Of course as others have pointed out, there is no pricing info; but let's assume for a minute that the things are priced the same or more than a regular PC.

    Why buy one?

    Because these things aren't aimed at J. Random Linux Hacker, or even Joe Blow Windows user. They're aimed at corporations who want to keep people locked down. Just try keeping a PC made from standard parts totally locked down. I've even seen standard PCs kludged with locks and keys, which people just ended up jimmying open so they could install a video card they could use to play games when the boss wasn't looking!

    With just a stupid thin client on your desk, you have to stay focused on the budget spreadsheet, or the timeline for ordering new timeline forms, or TPS reports, or whatever it is that's infinitely more boring than what a standard PC can offer.

    In other words, it's more likely to be secure by design right from the start.

    Also, there are fewer players in this space. Basic economics tells us that when there is less competition, prices remain high.

    Just to disclose, I do have some stock in Transmeta, and it's doing really well today.

    Would I buy such a device? Of course not. I have no need for it. I'm not a corporation that loses $50/employee/day in lost productivity due to PC maintenance and games.

    • Just try keeping a PC made from standard parts totally locked down.

      In all fairness, if you plan to be using a standard PC as a thin-client, you don't need to lock-down anything, since everything is on the server.

      Also, effectively locking the case will stop tampering. There are many cases designed to be locked, so they aren't just kludges.

  • what about the t5700? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @12:23PM (#6964907)
    Too fast for ya? T5700 with 1Ghz Transmeta [hp.com]
  • I don't see why people need 500+ Mhz for a thin client. I mean, even 200 Mhz is overkill. Why the need for such powerhouses?

    • Why the need for such powerhouses?

      It's probably a similar effect as in HD purchases at the local shop. If I should need to replace one of my systems' hard drives, the largest one consuming less than 10 GB (across two OS's), I'll probably have to buy a 40 or 60GB drive. This in that smaller units aren't available anymore, and even if they were, the price differential would probably be so small in comparison that I'd just buy the sizes that are available. For a few percent increase in price, just go ahead get


  • Thin clients may be useful in some limited business applications. But, it does not seem to be a very big niche.

    There is growing demand for small linux server boxes. Either for network use, as a T1/DSL router/firewall/VPN box. Or, as a small LAN server, doing things like DNS/DHCP in a corporate environment. Or, as an everything server for Home/DSL use, WWW/SMTP+spam-asassin/Proxy/DNS/DHCP/etc.

    If someone could package the TM5800 in a small form factor case, with no fans, and a drive bay for either a 2.5

    • If someone could package the TM5800 in a small form factor case, with no fans, and a drive bay for either a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD, it could be an excellent gateway/server platform

      Why do so many people on /. always have to say this crap?

      If you want a gateway/server machine, you get a low-power, dirt-cheap box. What you are suggesting is like buying a home computer system, and then striping out 80% of it, then upgrading part of it... In other words, why not just get a $100 system that was designed for the job,

  • Thin Clients Vs. PC (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm seeing alot of posts stating "I can buy a PC for two hundred bucks cheaper..." etc. There is a HUGE advantage and cost savings when using thin clients. First and foremost, the initial cost of implementing thin clients on hardware vs. hardware comparison is more expensive, this is a given. When you look into IT cost associated w/ the maintenence/implementation it is MUCH MUCH cheaper and easier to manage. The company I work for is top reseller of IGEL based thin clients in North America (http://www.igel
    • No you don't get it... I use mini-itx boxes in a thin client environment. Yes it is a pc but I boot them from compact flash hanging off a ide adapter. It boots in ten seconds and is totally silent(no fans) and all solid state. Did I mention the whole rig costs 240 dollars...Oh yes the power supply is sealed and the machine only burns 17 watts in this configuration.
  • It is beyond me why anybody would want to pay that amount of money for a Thin Client -- unless of course they can play tax games this way. The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP [ltsp.org]) would seem to blow this out of the water. At LinuxWorld in San Francisco the LTSP project picked up an award for "Best Open Source Project", and for good reason.

    Instead of going to HP, go out and get yourself a AMD K-6 or something similar, 64 MByte of RAM, and good graphics card from Ebay. If you have money to spend, spend it o

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