Sometimes looking at an old idea in a new way completely blows your mind. I just had such an experience.
I have a Samsung NC240 in my office and have been using it to be the first adopter of the View technology, as my previous boss at eGroup (www.egroup-us.com) used to say "We eat our own dog food". I use View primarily becuase I'm in the process of forcing my entire work force into using a VDI solution and I want everyone to see that I make myself use it as well. One of the features I like about this technology is that I can go to any terminal, log in as me, and get my desktop; basically I'm more mobile than ever before. I've used this feature and others to sell the technology up stream.
Today I happened to be working with a series of Nurses down stairs as I was deploying their new terminals (Samsung NC190) when I realized I made a mistake and setup the View Pool as Dedicated instead of Floating. I'm so used to setting up office workstations I forgot that in the majority of areas in the building the desktops are actually shared between employees. I was in the process of Recomposing my pool when I started to ask myself why I was doing this.
Why do I need to make these desktops floating instead of dedicated?
Because more than one user logs into them.
Why do multiple users log into the same workstation?
There is only enough room to put one workstation at each location.
What are the draw backs to having one workstation with multiple users logging into them?
The most common problem is that when a user locks the workstation another user can't walk up and unlock it. Another issue is that these users move around a lot, and Microsoft roaming profiles isn't exactly the best solution for a roaming employee.
I'll come back to my point, I was thinking this way because we've always done it this way. But my answers to my questions above are moot now. With VMWare View I can setup 5 for 50 desktops with minimal changes on the back end. Physically it doesn't require any additional space and it isn't that big of a change for me from an administration stand point.
My way of thinking changed, instead of setting up two VMs for these two zero clients I was deploying I decided to deploy enough VMs to cover every employee. Now when my employees are moving between areas all they have to do is hit the disconnect button on the Samsung terminal and log in with their credentials. They get their own personal desktop, not a shared desktop. This means their bookmarks, backgrounds, even applications stay the same regardless of where they sit down to do their work.
To me this is the same as when I go downstairs and connect to my VM, to them its a completely different way to work and solves a lot of little issues. I really feel that this little change is going to empower my workforce, there are some major productivity benefits from this setup as a user can stop what they are doing and pick it up exactly where they left off, no log off needed. Plus it gives them a feeling of ownership which IT has never given them before. I made some people smile today just by looking at something a little differently.
