Why do 'thin' computers cost more than PCs?
Summary: Why do thin computers which have fewer components cost so much more than a regular PC? In some of the examples shown here, thin computers cost twice as much as a full fledged computer.
Something that has always struck me as odd is the fact that thin computers cost more than full fledged computers even though they're not nearly as well equipped with things like high-performance processors or local hard drive storage. Take the brand new Sun Ray 2FS for example which starts at $499 with no monitor or the Sun Ray 170 comes with an integrated 17 inch LCD display that runs $869. Either product cost way more than a full fledged PC like the Dell Dimension 1100 which includes a 17 inch LCD display which can be purchased as low as $349 or similar deals with 19 inch LCD displays for only $50 more.
Now to be fair to Sun, other thin client manufacturers like Wise are fairly expensive too, but am I the only one that sees a problem with the entire thin computing pricing model here? Sure you have some impressive power saving features where the Sun Ray can operate with less than 10 watts of power (excluding monitor), but low voltage is easy to achieve when you don't have a hard drive and you don't need a lot of local CPU performance. The problem is that it's going to be difficult to justify the initial expense when the cost difference is so high even though you can make it up in a few years in electricity bills. With newer low-power processors coming out at the end of this year, low power computing will be more common in value PCs and the power difference will be slashed to 20 watts or less per station which will make the electric savings even more difficult to justify the additional expense of thin computers.
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Talkback
What the market will bear
sales person at a conference the other day. I'm a big fan of their
linux based HP t5125 and have used it in a number of designs
(one with windows terminal server (TS)).
Two points: HP will give a discounted bundled price for thin
clients with monitors (but you have to ask). Secondly pricing
decision for thin client hardware is more about what the market
will bear than cost plus.
Thin clients are predominantly use in the enterprise. Enterprises
pay more - fact of life. This is the same reason MS charges
significant money for TS Cals and why you can't use OEM Office
licenses for TS.
Of course neither are a cost for X11 based Linux terminal
servers and OOo (which since v2 deploys beautify to TS
configurations).
So why a thin client when thick is the same price?
i) Simplified updates
ii) No remote data to worry about
iii) Significant increase in availability (no moving parts)
iv) High failure parts can be located in server room
Given the cost of supporting windows PC (which each year are
multiples of the initial hardware cost) thin client designs save a
fortune over the life of the solution.
huh?
How on earth did you arrive at that number?
That's insane.
Not at all
That's insane."
Ask EDS or any of the enterprise IT outsourcing shops for a quote.
NB I'm talking about the enterprise, so "it costs me nothing to
support my 3 windows pcs at home" doesn't count as a valid
comparison.
I did ask
Sorry Richard
A very quick calculation I did based on salaries 9plus benefits) of the people who work here showed that it takes the entire lifetime of the PC (four years) for the support cost to reach the orginial purchase price. Ths included the obligatory AV cost and licenses for Office and WIndows of course. This calculation completely disregarded the 30 Windows servers, the network infratructure, the unix boxen, and the VOIP system we also support, so that's why your number seems so high to me.
I guess that's outcourcing for ya'?
Let's do the sums then
"A very quick calculation I did based on salaries 9plus benefits)
of the people who work here showed that it takes the entire
lifetime of the PC (four years) for the support cost to reach the
orginial purchase price."
Your total spend to support 1,200 windows desktops was
$1.2M/4 = $300,000 per years or $250 / PC / yr?
I think you might be an order of magnitude off with that figure.
Good estimate
That looks about right. I must concende that it might be more like $300-$350 though, depending of what areas of the enterprise you want to count as "supporting the Windows PCs".
[i]"I think you might be an order of magnitude off with that figure."[/i]
No, not really. I alone am either directly or indirectly in charge of around 500 PC's myself. Take away my numerous other duties, and I could handle 500 more. The myth that Windows machines cannot be efficiently managed is just that. Perhaps some other organizations who don't take advatage of the fact that Windows can be almost 100% remotely managed might be spending a ton more money, but when you have limited staff and an almost non-existant budget, you find ways to maximize what you have.
Most organizations buy loads of unneccssary, lazy-admin-hand-holding software like SMS, and DeepFreeze, or ZenWorks, or what-not, which drive up costs immensely. The products replace functionality that's already built into the OS. My version of "SMS/Zenworks" is Active Directory + group policies + WMI/Batch Scripts. my version of DeepFreeze is to not letting the users have local admin rights.
You can take this example right over to linux/unix world too. You can buy the expensive Red Hat/Sun Support contracts which provide you with tons of neato "enterprise management" tools, or you can deploy Cent-OS, or Debian, or FreeBSD and roll your own support/management infrastructure using /bin/sh and NFS. Sometimes it makes sense to pay the toll, sometimes it doesn't.
It all depends on how you manage your PCs
On the other hand if you have no standards and everyone does their own thing and you have to manually install the OS on every workstation, your desktop management will spiral out of control.
So if you manage PC's like thin clients
I'm hearing that if you stick with a single image and keep the users from being able to customize their machines then that keeps down the administrative costs.
Great, so then what advantage do you get over a thin client solution at that point? Oh yeah, data loss when the individual PC's hard disk crashes.
Not the point of rich clients
FreeNX as in Beer
FreeNX is a GPL implementation of thin client [url=http://www.nomachine.com]NX[/url].
Free as in Beer.
But don't take my word for it, read up [url=http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8477/print]here[/url].
With things like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA]HIPAA[/url] in full force here in the U.S., thin client is all the more attractive primarily for mitigating Fat Client gaping security issues.
More articles George. More! ;)
Right Carl
for device management. Most thin clients come with great
management tools as well (some without charge).
The Linux Terminal Server Project (www.ltsp.org) has good how-
to for linux based thin client deployment on new thin clients or
recycled older PCs.
FreeNX is good for low bandwidth connections (e.g. remote site)
but standard X11 is suitable for LAN (10Mbs+) speeds.
Thin clients will play an important role in *nix based desktops.
The licensing advantage of *nix systems in this configuration is
impossible to beat.
Yes, but you can buy a cheap PC and do this
Just a thought...
You would have less of an upgrade cycle on your thin clients.
Less routine maintenance costs. (ie: Admins going to people's computers fixing things).
Less power consumed.
I would think the initial 400 more compensates for the probable 1000's you'd save in the long run. But it's just a guess really since I've never worked in a thin client environment. But from my perspective I can see a total cost savings over regular PC.
TCO does not justify price
A thin client is actually simpler in many ways than a PC. I can see see some justification for more cost because of lower volume and form factor issues, but not to the degree that is commonly seen.
I really do not like thin clients
i) Simplified updates
ii) No remote data to worry about
iii) Significant increase in availability (no moving parts)
iv) High failure parts can be located in server room
Given the cost of supporting windows PC (which each year are
multiples of the initial hardware cost) thin client designs save a
fortune over the life of the solution.[/i]
Do you notice that sys admins are the ones who like thin clients, while users like rich clients? The bottom line is that users are significantly more productive with rich client solutions than they are with thin client solutions. (This has to be the case, otherwise the computer market never would have accepted PCs in businesses.) Therefore when all is said and done, rich clients for the most part make businesses more productive than thin clients.
I cannot tell you how much I despise thin clients, and how they take away power from users, and hand it over to others! Does this mean I hate Windows Terminal or the browser? No. Why? Because these thin client solutions augment the capabilities of the user and his rich client ? not take them away. I absolutely, hate, hate, hate, hate, thin clients!
do not like them in a box. I do not like them with a fox I do not like...
with rich client solutions than they are with thin client solutions.
(This has to be the case, otherwise the computer market never
would have accepted PCs in businesses.) "
They are? Based on what evidence? Are you speaking for every IT
scenario? The reasons PC are popular are varied an hardly
evidence of the inferiority of thin clients.
The savings of thin client solutions, particularly in the financial
sector who are attracted by the small footprint and ease of
replacement are well documented. In these environments the
productivity of the users is as high or higher than thick client
deployments.
Thin client suitability depends on the environment. Financial
services installs have demonstrated massive savings with thin
client deployments. In this environment thin client solutions are
demonstratively more productive than thick client.
"I cannot tell you how much I despise thin clients, and how they
take away power from users, and hand it over to others!"
And this is the reason we like them. We don't want to have the
user doing whatever they like for a number of cost, operational,
and legal reasons. Restricting the user environment will not in all
case diminish productivity, and in the enterprise will not
diminish productivity for even the majority of users.
I asked a lot of people and they all said thin is good for other people
curious
i would imagine that it all boils down to one thing. What are you doing on the pc at work? it is just after all a tool.
This made me chuckle, I must say
A thin client can be as rich as you want it to be. What power is taken away? Several years ago, I was an IT admin of a project that was winding down. Naturally, as we got closer to the end money for new equipment was especially tight. I used a terminal server to extend the life of old machines by converting them to thin clients.
The thin clients were actually better than the PC they replaced. No abilities were taken away at all. In fact most people simply thought that we had speeded up their computer.
Used properly, thin clients are a great thing.