Virtualization : dual core cpus for interent cafe's?

[TrinireturnofGamez]

  Theoretically  virtualization allows one machine to install and run multiple OSe's at the same time....
    This would be interesting to use in an internet cafe.. .well for the surfing only section at least..
   
   One  system with dual core cpu.. 1 gb of ram..  running virtualization .... Run 3 WinXP at the same time .. hook up to 3 monitors.. 3 usb keyboard.. 3 usb mouse.....  You just saved yourself buying 3 different    Systems !
      That alone would make internet cafe's much more affordable to  upkeep if you get  a 3 users to one machine ratio ..... It will only be applicable for  surfing , word processing  etc.  i won't want to try and play BF2 over LAN splitting  the resources between a man playing Sof2 and someone  watching nrop....   
   Though multiple use gaming on one rig  would be possible in a lower end game eg. Warcraft III , and if several people playing the same game i don't think the RAM penalty will be that high as they accesing alot of the same data .

  Also in a home situation when mumz want to check her mail... sis want to burn cd... just get a seperate monitor , keyboard and mouse .. and you in business..
  If Virtualization ever gets off the ground as they say it should we could be looking at a nice new way to save money... have cheap sweats etc.

[TriniXaeno]

This has been around for some time now.

I don't like it. Not one bit.

If you want to do any sort of thin client, then do it the old fashioned way, with a network.

Terminal services is great (but expensive). There are ways around that a few other products out there that can achieve the same thing. Neat company called Thinsoft makes a couple.


But just like you said, none of these will work well for gaming (short of Solitaire) so it much use for a GL.

Even home users will find that a second cheap machine is more viable. Since it is just that much simpler to setup. PCs, especially low end ones, are practically being given away.

Just look around at the trading grounds and you'll see entire PCs going for under TT$1000.00 that would do internet and word processing just fine.

[Beomagi]

i have to agree with baego. Internet cafe? nah. But heavy server use by multiple people, where the server is usually hit up with heavy processing by only 1 or 2 parties at a time - that would benefit a lot.

Been using wmware ESX server on a quad cpu proliant machine to run 3 environments for our software testing. really cuts down on hardware costs

[TinyGrasshopper]

I'm interning at a firm that sells an Open Source thin-client solution. Symbio Technologies.(http://www.symbio-technologies.com) I wholly recommend it for something like an internet cafe. The cool thing about it is that its not embedded, it's completely diskless. Much of the hassle of thin-clients right now is because they're embedded and that implementation is too complicated. This is more akin to the old 70s mainframe model but much cheaper of course. The server is a typical app server and the terminals are diminutive in every respect,(size, power consumption, desk footprint) except performance. All the apps run on the server making development, security and administration centralised. It handles nx and rdp so it's platform independent too. My role there is trivial though.

[TriniXaeno]

kick ass

I also see that there work is based on LTSP.

Magical bit of code. Had the pleasure of seeing it run during a "project" many moons ago.

Getting the machines to use bootp and tftp proved a royal pain in the asm but once Rich and they figured it out, smooth as silk iwmc!

Which reminds me, I must check up on those guys in the east sometime and see how the things are going.

[TinyGrasshopper]

There's another linux based terminal solution i heard of that actually kinda kooky. Can't remember the name but hardware-wise it consists of a machine with multiple graphics cards and usb ports that you hook up to one machine.

[Trinitus]

This is reall good, too bad for the gaming department, that would have been even better, but what is the maximum outlets that should be run from the system? Lets say using Internet Explorer or Firefox?