Thin clients - Speak to me of cheap client PCs.

[Overly Serious]

I have this understanding that there's such a thing as a "thin client". That is a PC which is nothing more than a terminal which connects to a more powerful computer that runs the actual session and software the thin client is connected to.

This sounds like a good thing. I have a powerful computer which I think could easily handle sessions for a number of PCs for family or just for me to use a more appropriate device in other rooms when I want to couch surf, etc. but still want all the things set up on my main PC.

BUT, while I have a basic knowledge of networking and can set up remote sessions on Windows or Linux and have done, the hardware side eludes me. I can't find anything to use as a "thin client" that would be meaningfully cheaper than just running the OS on it in the first place. The cheapest laptops are still very expensive and capable compared to what I need. I guess there are some very low-end tablets. But of course the screen quality is poor on most of them. Am I simply looking in the wrong place or misunderstanding this thin-client thing? And if I wanted the remote sessions to be Windows, I'd put a Linux distro on the laptop and RDP into the Windows machine for the cheapest option?

Basically, two needs - one, give family a cheap way to use the more powerful machine (currently a Windows box) and two - let me use a better form-factor device (tablet or light laptop) from anywhere but it seamlessly be my main computer. Cheap options for this? Best software to use?

 

[Mikoyan]

"Thin clients" have always been kind of bullshit for normies to try and implement. You get the basic idea right, but understanding of the market is needed to see why businesses do it. Real "thin client" boxes are $2-400 which is a little less than a tiny PC. They really like thin clients due to security and operations optimization. Without 'real' computing on the edge it's technically a smaller attack surface. And there's no reboot and reimage, just reconnect, instantiate a new desktop on your VDI server and you're up and running. It's about reliability and low-fuss, not hardware cost.

Having said that, I'm talking to you right now from something like what you want. I have a 'secure desktop' that I use to access things like KF. Right now I'm on a Linux laptop, but the system I'm "really using" is a Win10 Pro VM on an ESXi server, and I'm using an RDP client to get to it. Something like this is the easiest to set up for most users, as you've identified.

I don't know what crappy laptop or tablet would be best for a cheap solution, sadly, someone else might. Bad screens bug me too much for me to shop that segment.

 

[Tom Myers]

I've seen a setup at a previous job that used Microsoft thin clients. A user could log onto any machine and the server(s) would load their entire environment onto the machine. It was really fast too. That doesn't answer your questions though.

Maybe look at Azure remote desktop? AWS has workspaces which similar.

https://thinstation.github.io/thinstation/ with a cheap mini-pc?

 

[Mikoyan]

I've seen a setup at a previous job that used Microsoft thin clients. A user could log onto any machine and the server(s) would load their entire environment onto the machine. It was really fast too. That doesn't answer your questions though.

Maybe look at Azure remote desktop? AWS has workspaces which similar.

https://thinstation.github.io/thinstation/ with a cheap mini-pc?

The cloud options are interesting! I don't know their pricepoints though.

 

[Tims]

Thin Clients are more for the business space & are marked up as such. They are normally ran (in a regular business) from a Windows terminal server, the licensing hardware etc to actually get it to work (you need to buy whats known as client access licenses) would make it cheaper to just get them a chrome book or someting. There's a few thin client devices on ebay that may be worth checking idk.

 

[Tom Myers]

The cloud options are interesting! I don't know their pricepoints though.

They're expensive as fuck. I've used the Azure version and it's pretty damn good, but my work had some sort of sweetheart deal with MS so we had the better instances for cheap.

The 'GPU' instance which is quad core etc was priced out at 140 a month when I just checked. The single core 0.75gb of ram instance was 14 a month.

 

[Kosher Dill]

"Thin clients" have always been kind of bullshit for normies to try and implement.

Yeah, the real benefit is when you can fire your desktop support staff and replace them with apes who just know "Unplug broken terminal / Plug in new terminal".

 

[Overly Serious]

They're expensive as fuck. I've used the Azure version and it's pretty damn good, but my work had some sort of sweetheart deal with MS so we had the better instances for cheap.

The 'GPU' instance which is quad core etc was priced out at 140 a month when I just checked. The single core 0.75gb of ram instance was 14 a month.

Thanks for all replies. I've read every one of them and this has been a big help explaining why I hear about "thin clients" but can't seem to make an economical version myself. I've singled out the above post though because this might actually be useful to me for another reason.

Are you saying that I can take some cheapo machine of random type and have a paid-per-month Windows "installation" that they just connect to over the Internet and all the data and accounts etc. is handled in the cloud? I'm guessing you install Windows on the cheapo device anyway but it's handled up there.

This could be very useful to me in the near future for a business reason. Like I could hire on six or seven people for a four month job, have all their accounts managed in Azure so I don't have to worry about data security (as much) and pay the £250 per month or whatever for their Windows licence and set up.

I've seen a setup at a previous job that used Microsoft thin clients. A user could log onto any machine and the server(s) would load their entire environment onto the machine. It was really fast too. That doesn't answer your questions though.

Maybe look at Azure remote desktop? AWS has workspaces which similar.

https://thinstation.github.io/thinstation/ with a cheap mini-pc?

This looks useful. Can it handle touch screens if I put it on a cheap tablet, do you know?

 

[CryoRevival #SJ-112]

Regarding your family, 99% of normal people use their home computer as a bootloader for google chrome, just get a few cheap laptops from an ewaste vendor, stick a low intensity linux distro and an SSD in each of them, and put the chrome icon on the desktop and if necessary accustom them to libreoffice. Anything they might want to install is almost certainly going to be malware, else I would suggest wine + MS Office.

For you, any kind of cloud hosted performance beyond that of what a low formfactor device can provide you, you are going to be paying a significant premium for because everyone else paying for it writes it off on their taxes or some other such business accounting trick.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I haven't been following this for a long while but RDP wasn't good for moving images like video and certainly not games, MS had a solution cooking where they would offload certain things to the client but I don't know where that ultimately went, I think it was something for the upcoming Server 2012.
With hardware h264/h265 encoding in every device it seem like they could just pipe over content that way, video and vidya is rendered on offscreen surfaces and they could absolutely figure out a way to encode those as a video stream and merge it in the client. Unless they're doing so now, I'm ten+ years behind on this.

The so called comedy option for this would be GeForce Now. It's patched now but during beta it was possible to escape their Steam sandbox and access the virtual machine proper, then you had a remote Windows computer with (part of) a threadripper and a fat GPU.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

With hardware h264/h265 encoding in every device it seem like they could just pipe over content that way, video and vidya is rendered on offscreen surfaces and they could absolutely figure out a way to encode those as a video stream and merge it in the client. Unless they're doing so now, I'm ten+ years behind on this.

That's basically what the Steam Link does. Or did, Valve doesn't make them anymore. They work OK but even on a wired LAN the latency is too high for any games that require low input lag like just about every FPS and twitch platformers like Cuphead.

 

[THEY STOLE MY FORESKIN]

One great use for thin clients would be computer labs in schools and universities, mine had many different labs with 20-35 computers each with Deep Freeze installed. The consequence was that the software installed was usually old and when you opened something it would nag you to download the latest version. If they wanted to update the software they had to do it manually for each and every computer. I could also see this being good to bypass license fees, since as I understand it you would only have to install the software in one computer. Since they have their own server infrastructure, I have no idea why they never chose to do that.

 

[Mikoyan]

One great use for thin clients would be computer labs in schools and universities, mine had many different labs with 20-35 computers each with Deep Freeze installed. The consequence was that the software installed was usually old and when you opened something it would nag you to download the latest version. If they wanted to update the software they had to do it manually for each and every computer. I could also see this being good to bypass license fees, since as I understand it you would only have to install the software in one computer. Since they have their own server infrastructure, I have no idea why they never chose to do that.

Back in my day *shakes cane* we ran the lab computers off of netboot and a netware share and we could just copy a master copy of Windows over it.

And yeah, that's a good usecase.

 

[GHTD]

We use Wyse 5070's at work and all I can say is that they're awful. Laggy and I have to get the IT helpdesk to reinstall Teams everyday because it never fucking works on these things.

Our helpdesk actually has a dedicated option for Teams reinstalls because it's so common to have it reinstalled on our Wyse machines infact. How sad is that?

 

[Tims]

If you want a really shitty cheap version of Windows microsoft is doing an online Windows VM thing, so you could get like a shitty chromebook or something & run Windows through it if thats what people are accustomed to: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-365

 

[Slobs]

As with all cheap tech, you're gonna want to buy ex-business stock, and unless you need a very large amount of thin clients it's nowhere near as economical or convenient than PCs and laptops (which you can also get for very cheap from ex-business refurbishers). As for what you want to use them for, the market's solution for low-end/casual use is streaming boxes (netflix, etc.) and smart phones.

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

Everyone who said "thin clients are exclusively for enterprise scenarios" is correct. Thin clients are only a couple hundred bucks less than a perfectly serviceable low end machine, but they also require a special server, which is much more. Unless the difference between a thin client and a thick client multiplied by the number of thin clients you're buying is greater than the server cost, you're already losing money. And that's not even taking setup into account, which can be a pain in the ass.

It's easier and more economical to just get everyone a laptop in the mid-low hundreds range. Go to Costco and buy a bunch of clearance machines.