Just wanted to share something that I came across on Kickstarter (and again, I am fighting the urge to splurge on supporting what I reckon is a great project).
This project on Kickstarter is looking to bring out a USB device that will allow you to expand the use of a single computer and piggy back one or more of these USB devices off it to create a whole new workstation (you need to provided a mouse, keyboard and monitor though – those just don’t come out of thin air).
One question you might want to ask is how far do these things scale? According to the updates page on Kickstarter their Core i5 Sandy Bridge box with 3GB manages to handle 6 thin clients getting a fair hammering apart from when high resolution video kicks in. However, for things such as browsing, e-mail and productivity apps this could be a cheap and easy way to leverage the excess horsepower just waiting to be harnessed in some of the powerhouse computers that are available these days.
In terms of operating system compatibility you’re looking at either using Fedora 17 or Windows Multipoint Server 2011 (which will cost you money for the OS as well as licenses for each thin client but may still work out cheaper than buying individual computers if you are doing this above board).
Anyway, check it out. It could be a great way to do more with less in your business or scale a home computer up to support multiple clients (handy when you have kids who are growing up and need their own workstations at home for homework.
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