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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Especially after the Atlanta Public
Schools masterpiece/debacle (depending on how you look at it) that
Jim, Aaron, and I did a few years ago, I would advise this school
to tread very, very carefully. That donation from SSA can turn
into a leaden albatross very easily - perhaps so easily that there
is no way to avoid it. <br>
<br>
The basic problem always seems to come down to trading up-front
cost and labor avoidance for some combination of up-front and
follow-on labor cost. It's the latter that really hurts because it
accrues over time.<br>
<br>
Let's assume all the PCs are the same, were procured at about the
same time by SSA off either GSA or some other blanket procurement,
and they all function perfectly when you receive them. If you
deploy so as to depend on the disk drives in each one, the far end
of the so-called "bathtub curve" distribution of drive failures is
out there waiting for you and when you arrive at it, you'll be
sinking a lot of labor into drive replacement and system recovery
that you could avoid by designing to get rid of the disk drives (a
separate calculation would help to determine if it is worth it to
remove or just unplug the drives; in this day and age I doubt it
would be worth it to make a single massive array out of them and
use the array for infrastructure). <br>
<br>
We deployed 2200 thin-client seats in seven schools, up to 500 per
school, and we were trying to stick to one app server for every
100 seats (we would likely have that number at 400-500 today).
Even at just 53 machines it would definitely call for some sort of
netboot/central-app arrangement like the one we built or the labor
intensity would just be ridiculous.<br>
<br>
But more to your original question, I would first compare the
goods and labor cost of monitors against that of 53 all-up
monitor/thin-client combos before even agreeing to take the
donation. When we tried to bid for the job of building out the
rest of the APS district, I worked out many of the details that
would be associated with assembling monitor/thin-client combos at
industrial scale - tens of thousands of seats' worth. When you do
that, you have to sweat the labor intensity of every single step
in the process (e.g. screwing monitors to thin clients, loading
trucks) and plan things so as to keep costs from scaling with
volume to the greatest degree possible. <br>
<br>
Recall that the CCF backlights in monitors dim over time and if
you source monitors that are already five years old or older,
that's a lot of CCF life that's already behind them. If you were
to go for refurbs, you'd want to know if new CCFs were part of the
refurb.<br>
<br>
The power consumption of an idling tower PC is a lot greater than
that of a thin client; the latter of which only needs to run a
little dippy CPU and not much RAM if all that it's really doing is
running Xorg and perhaps a few other daemons to handle sound and
so forth. Even the power supply fans in PCs, if you get 8-10 of
them in a classroom, make a fair amount of noise. <br>
<br>
On 10/4/16 9:04 AM, Vernard Martin wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAJQ7SJU0thDFaVT2OLPFZHm-OwT5yYqsQ=O5zbGvq0C1158HVA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">An acquaintance of mine
that runs a small private school has recently given the
opportunity to acquire 59 computers from the Social Security
Administration but no monitors. I'm not sure that they have an
OS currently loaded on them and I am, of course, strongly
suggesting that she go with an open source Linux-based
solution either way. However, their immediate needs are a
supply of flat-panel monitors or the units aren't very
useful. <br>
<br>
They are based in the Atlanta area. Since I'm no longer living
in Atlanta, I'm doing all this remotely. Its a challenge as
you can imagine :) Does anyone have any suggestions on where I
can call around looking for donations? And barring that, does
anyone know where I can purchase around 60 refurbish monitors
in bulk? I figure 14" 1024x768 would be the low-end units that
would work, especially if they are being donated. Anything
less just might not be worth it in the long run.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Any leads would be
appreciated.</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Vernard</div>
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