Gallery

How to make your business green: Thin clients and desktops

Posted on 2 Sep 2008 at 16:54

<strong>We explore whether you can really replace desktop PCs with energy-efficient thin clients.</strong>

According to figures from the Carbon Trust, computer equipment, excluding servers, accounts for 15% of all electrical energy used in UK offices, a figure that's expected to double by 2020.

Clearly, then, there are massive savings to be made by replacing those energy-guzzling desktops with more environmentally aware alternatives, and one such type is the much-heralded thin client.

Thin clients
Thin clients are essentially dumb terminals used to access applications on a central server. As nothing needs to be stored or processed on the terminal, they typically have no moving parts and consume a fraction of the power of a desktop PC.

Thin clients have been around in one form or another for years, but with energy costs climbing and growing concerns over the climate, the machines are now part of a renewed environmental push from manufacturers such as HP, IGEL, Sun and Wyse.

And there are certainly impressive numbers to back up their green credentials. Research conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany found that thin clients use on average nearly half the energy of a fully featured desktop PC, saving UK businesses a potential £78 million on their electricity bill and slashing carbon emissions by 485,000 tons over the course of a year.

"It doesn't make sense for a company to put powerful PCs on desktops when most of their employees only need Word," said PC Pro contributing editor Dave Mitchell.

"A lot of companies still don't understand the concept of thin clients, but they have a lot of potential. They only use about 8W of power, so you could reduce utility bills for a start, then there's the added benefits.

"The office is quiet because there are no fans in those machines. You can turn down the air conditioning because they're not pumping out so much heat, so there's a saving there, too."

However, critics of thin clients argue that while they may use less power, by requiring a server to do their processing overall power consumption is about the same. The Fraunhofer Institute refutes this criticism with more numbers, claiming that while PCs consume about 85W on average, thin clients including their server require only 40W to 50W, depending on use.

"I can see a day when most people use a dumb terminal and stream services through a very fast pipe," said Neil Kalsi, channel sales manager at Boston. "And if you start thinking about virtualisation partnered with thin clients, there's now an interesting argument for them."

Another advantage, according to Kalsi, is that due to their simplicity there's less chance of mechanical failure within the box. Also, as all application updates - including that of the OS - are made on the server, they're easy to manage.

Indeed, Sun claims its thin client will last around nine years without needing to be upgraded, as opposed to three or four years for a traditional desktop PC, reducing its environmental impact.

We're also starting to see novel alternatives to thin clients. Last month, we reviewed Cranberry's SC20 Smart Client, which is a centrally managed PC with just enough grunt to run apps locally.

We've also recently reviewed VeryPC's GreenHive - a single piece of hardware that can simultaneously support seven users.

Next: Energy Star