A thin/zero clients is an alternative to computer rooms, offering some strong benefits to the education sector and business environments alike. In a thin/zero clients, the noisy and bulky desktop PCs and clumsy laptops have been replaced with compact computer terminals installed on the rear of each display housing.
All such terminals are connected to one central host – the server. Thanks to the dedicated architecture of the server machines and MultiPoint software, each workstation user in a thin/zero clients can have their own separate desktop environment and can access a set of preinstalled applications.
Working with a terminal feels identical to working with a conventional, standalone PC workstation, as each terminal is equipped with the same standard peripherals, such as a keyboard and a mouse, and supports all the well-known basic PC operation techniques. Need to access your own files? No problem at all! All you need to do is connect your pendrive to your terminal's USB port. The operating system’s desktop, the applications, multimedia and internet access all work exactly in the same way and have the same look and feel as if they were used in a standard computer room.
Thin/zero clients that employ Avtek terminals offer numerous advantages over computer rooms set up as networks of desktop or laptop PCs:
Supervising and maintaining computer hardware at a company or school computer room is often a responsibility of a single administrator or computer science teacher. Fortunately, managing an IT environment that is based entirely on Avtek terminals essentially boils down to managing a single server-side system. Instead of installing software components separately on the individual workstations, they only need to be installed once – on the central server – and it will become accessible to all connected users.
Among other features, the server-side Multipoint software lets the administrator view the desktops of the individual users and run any application on all thin/zero workstations at once.
Managing the system from the server makes it substantially easier to install new software, fine-tune system settings or keep a watch over data security. Another fact worth mentioning: as the server is the exclusive location in the network where the data of all users is stored, if any user’s workstation is physically damaged, that user will not lose their document files.
Due to their advantages, strongly simplified administration and much lower implementation and maintenance costs, Avtek thin and zero clients are perfect for the education sector (as the school computer room or library workstations) and have been gaining popularity in public (authorities, offices, hospitals) and business organisations (office workstations, open space environments).