[WEB4LIB] Net PCs and Thin Clients for OPAC Access

[James Klock]

>We are planning for the migration of our OPACs from terminals to a
>web-based PC interface (probably about 15 nodes).  Only the web catalog will 
>be accessed on the client -- no other electronic products, no access to the
>rest of the web.  Does anyone have experience in using a thin client
>solution for this application -- specifically a product like HP's
>NetVectra GT310?

The NetVectra, as a "Winterm", is one of the many terminals designed to
work with Windows NT Terminal Server.  While there are differences in
price, features and performance amoung Winterms, they're all essentially
fairly similar, and are definately secondary to the NT Terminal Server that
will support them (which has been previously addressed in Christopher
Stewart's post, which also included comments on Citrix MetaFrame, which is,
I believe, something of an extension of the NT Terminal Server (which
happens to be based on Citrix's technology, which was previously
implemented as Citrix WinFrame).

I should like to note that NT Terminal Server works, as Chris described, by
running applications on the server, and merely sending the visual output to
and receiving input from the thin client/terminal.  In the interest of
equal time for us Linux wonks, I should further note that this is an idea
which was realized much earlier in the Unix-driven X Window system.  

In fact, there are thin client Network Computers produced by a variety of
vendors which work just like Winterms, in that the terminal/winterm/NC has
the server doing all the real work, while it merely displays the
information.  These devices are not particularly homologous, and can be
configured in lots of different ways to do lots of different things.  While
all of them are capable of loading their OS (which is typically a flavor of
unix) from a server, many of them can be configured with non-volatile flash
RAM on which applications can be loaded, allowing these terminals to handle
the processing of applications locally, if that is desired.  

I recently evaluated several such devices, produced by NCD, Neoware and
Tektronix (which I believe was recently purchased by NCD).  They are not
neccesarily perfectly suited for public-access library terminals, in that
they require a great deal of configuration and unix expertise to set up in
a secure and robust fashion, but they are considerably more powerful and
flexible than the Winterms that I've seen.

James