Re:Could have told you that was coming (Score 1)

How much money are we talking about? I don't mind taking some.

We run a hybrid thin/fat client that offloads CPU to the local client. Why does 3Ghz make it not a think client?

And yes, you can run 700 concurrent connection without problem (Linux server). In fact, a lot of the times there is extra CPU/RAM on the server so we also run proxy and content filtering on them as well. In fact, the limits that we have hit are not CPU based at all, but memory and network bandwidth. Which is why we run 2Gig backbones at each site now.

With our "OLD" system we run about 60 clients at a time (on average) per dual P3 server (4Gig RAM). The CPU rarely gets maxes out with even these machines, but the RAM is the limiting factor.

With the new systems, we offload CPU work to the local client. Hence, we have not hit a wall yet with 700 systems on one server. In fact the network is by far the biggest limit.

Heck, we do run tours for tech people once in a while (usually as a group) to demo our setup.
We run this setup now at about 25 sites that range from 65-700 systems at each site. We are now into our 3rd year running our improved system, and almost 10 years running our original thin client setup.

I might point out that there is a lot of other bonus things that you get. Did I mention how easy it is to backup all these sites. The backup server runs nightly snapshots for over 500 of those,plus monthly archives.

As well, one machine dies, you just swap it out and get back to work. No more setup/config/waste of time. In fact we can have a site back up and running in under 2 hours from a complete and total failure -- what is YOUR recovery time. IE: we had a site broken into and every system stolen.

As for extending the life span -- absolutely -- small upgrade to the server can increase the CPU power/ram/drive space for every one, at much less cost. Even better, with sharing memory segments, a lot of software can run concurrent users with very little memory footprint. Firefox 3 is an great example of faster/smaller. Our 3 year old systems, are still running just fine with many, many software updates.

But of course, we are doing this without licensing any software at all -- so another bonus -- again what is your annual software cost?

So, rather than calling bullshit, why don't you take a look at the idea, before you get upset. Might I recommend looking in LTSP, as it really has some good ideas. Or you can get a hold of me, and take a closer look at what thin client can do!