| All Macedonian students to use Linux desktops |
Sep. 18, 2007
The One Laptop per Child's XO, better known as the $100 laptop, gets most of the headlines but NComputing is showing in Macedonia, with its Ubuntu Linux based servers and virtual PC terminals, that there's more than one way to get inexpensive Linux desktops into students' hands.
NComputing announced this week that its multi-user virtual desktop software and low-cost virtual PC terminals will be used to equip every school child in the Republic of Macedonia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, with a Linux desktop. The national undertaking will standardize all schools around a single technology platform, the "Computer for Every Child" project of the Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science. All together Macedonia will deploy 180,000 NComputing-enabled workstation seats, enough to provide virtually every elementary and secondary school student in the nation with his or her own classroom computing device.
NComputing's low-cost hardware
NComputing's multi-user virtual desktop software and low-cost virtual PC terminals, along with supporting Linux-based PCs, were proven in Macedonia tests to deliver a rich PC experience at less than half the cost of any other proposed solution, including low cost desktop and laptop PCs and other thin client options, said Ivo Ivanovski, Macedonia's Minister for the Information Society in a statement.
One advantage of going with NComputing is that with half the students attending school in the morning, and half attending in the afternoon, 180,000 workstations will provide a 1-to-1 computing experience -- one virtual PC at each student's desk -- for the country's entire public school student population.
"The Computer for Every Child initiative is the largest and most important education project undertaken in the 15-year history of the Republic of Macedonia," said Ivanovski in a statement. "Our goal is to build a knowledge-based economy in which our entire workforce is educated in using information and communication technology within the next five years. Yet, like most school systems around the world, Macedonia's education system has limited financial and infrastructural resources to address this challenge. By adopting NComputing's low-cost virtual PC technology, Macedonia is taking the lead in providing computer-based education for school children."
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"We at NComputing believe that providing PC access to the next billion users -- those who cannot afford the cost of an individual PC -- is the single biggest challenge facing our industry today. Perhaps the most important segment of this under-served mass market is school children, including students in the United States and other developed countries, as well as those in developing nations," said Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing in a statement.
With NComputing's X300, up to seven users can simultaneously share a single PC, with six users connected through the X300 kits and one user working directly on the host PC. Each X300 kit includes a half-size PCI card and three access terminals. The terminals connect to the PCI card via a standard Cat 6 STP (shielded twisted-pair) cable that can be up to 10 meters (33 feet) long. In addition to supplying the monitor, keyboard, mouse and audio signals to the terminal, the cable from the PCI card also supplies power, eliminating the need for separate power adapters
The company claims that setup is simple, and begins with software on the shared PC that creates multiple virtual user desktops. Standard monitors, keyboards and mice then plug into very low-cost, highly reliable virtual PCs (also known as access terminals). NComputing terminal use between one and five watts of power for each added user, versus 115 watts for a typical PC.
The resulting cost and power savings are critical to school deployments, including in Macedonia, because budgets and electricity are often limited. Macedonia also chose NComputing's technology because maintenance and replacement costs are a fraction of what they are for traditional PC deployments. NComputing's solid-state virtual PC terminals have no moving parts and require little or no maintenance, so the principal maintenance costs follow only the shared PCs and monitors. In addition, in an upgrade cycle to newer PCs, only the PCs themselves, not the virtual PC terminals, need to be replaced. Pricing is as low as $70 per seat.
When completed, Macedonia's Computer for Every Child initiative will have deployed approximately 160,000 NComputing virtual PC terminals and 20,000 NComputing enabled PCs (which each also support a student on the attached monitor) running Ubuntu. Besides Ubuntu 7.04, each NComputing server/PC comes with NComputing's Terminal Server software and OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, and Wine.
NComputing claims that the Macedonia project is at the same time, the largest known thin client and desktop Linux deployment ever undertaken. "This project would not have been possible 5 years ago," said Ivanovski. "Today's least expensive desktop PCs are so powerful we use less than 10% of their capacity and NComputing's technology puts this wasted power to work."
NComputing also offers the L-series, which connects via Ethernet at any distance from a shared PC or server on either LANs or over the Internet. The number of L-series virtual PCs supported is limited only by the power of the shared PC. Hundreds can be supported on virtualized servers. Both the X and L-series are available via a global reseller network.
-- Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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