RE: Thoughts on computers in schools

Allan Samaroo wrote:

> 
> 
> Do we know what may be a school's requirements?  I assume it differs by
> school.  Shiva, what would be the requirements for your school?
> 
> 
I suspect it depends on how sophisticated the school is. If we're 
talking a behind-God-back
scenario, they'll be happy for anything. If it's a more upscale setup, 
they may want W2K
($over-being-of-the-week only knows why).
> 

> Do these cheap NICS come with EEPROMS or do you still need them?
> 
Cheap NICs come WITHOUT EEPROMs. That's they're cheap.
> 

> 
> Right now, purchasing computers in not an option we have.........maybe
> later.
> 

The good news is that all a PC needs to turn it into a thin client is a 
NIC with
a BOOT PROM. It literally requires nothing else. Paul and I were joking that
all you really need, is a motherboard, CPU, RAM and a power supply (as long
as the motherboard has on-board NIC and video)
> 
> What hardware requirements do you recommend for a server for this
> application?

That is hard to tell at this point. I really need more experience with 
more clients
running off a server. I should know more about this later in the year. 
 From what I've read,
the optimal server seems to have about 50MB per user and a 2 CPU setup. 
 From practical
experience, I would recommend SCSI drives to IDE, simply becoz SCSI 
multitasks. SCSI
is more expensive but worth it. The two Fujitsu servers in Shiva's 
school might be good test
bed machines to stress test how much a server can take. Without moving 
them, perhaps
Shiva and I could set up a simulation to test the concept? He has 30 
PCs. If the server manages
to respond to 30 PCs without meltdown occurring, that gives us a baseline.

> 
> 
> 
> I think the lowest version of windows we should be looking at is Windows
> 2000, if we are to look at windows at all.
> 
Well, difference of opinion here. I'd say lowest version should be 
Windows98. Lower
hardware requirements. W2K needs about 128MB RAM to get off the floor. 
Win98 can
squeeze into 32MB with a push. Anyhow.

Richard

-- 
A couple who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1995, were both
born on August 16th, seven years apart. The man is 2,555 days older than
his wife. In what years were they born?

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