Posts by Anonymouse42 3 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2013
Precisely. Most of the commentators in this thread seem to be alarmingly ill informed about the wider world of computing. Yes, a Sun Ray has a lot to offer compared to a Sun / Unix workstation for an organisation that only buys from Sun. Sadly for them, back in the real world, that type of environment forms in infinitesimally small part of the commercial landscape.
Just to expand on the complexity issue - the problem is that the client is so thin that it requires one dedicated server per 200 devices to provide the necessary grunt - and that server is a complex and expensive Solaris box. Scale that up, add the servers necessary to support any Windows desktops, the support costs, and you have a large, complex and very uneconomic solution, compared to, say, Wyse. Obviously cheaper if you have a solely Unix based environment, but who has that?
The devices draw very little power, but they had no on/off switch - so they drew that little power 24*7, 52 weeks of the year. Unless you could get the sleep mode to work, and it didn't in our Sun supported POC.
The optimum quantity of processing power on the desktop is not the very minimum, because that gives you a solution that is too inflexible. IMO, the balance is best set at a much higher level of grunt, and limited by power consumption and complexity / resource usage of the firmware upgrade process.
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