Impact of Thin/Zero-Client Hardware spec

[MartinE11]

I am interested in the impact on a thinclient’s hardware specs. All thin/zero client vendors offer different hardware specs and often they name their versions like ‘Office Workers’. ‘Power User’ and ‘CAD-Worker’.

However, in my understanding the thin/zero client only have little to no impact in performance, as it is only displaying what it gets from the virtual infrastructure (virtual Machine). So to have more performance you have to increase VM-Hardware Specs or add vGPU/GRID etc.

Do I get this right? Is it only, or at least mainly, a marketing strategy to name them like that? What real, end-user impact do those different specs have (CPU-Speed, video-memory, RAM)?

My assumption would be the following:

CPU-Speed: Only impact on how fast a thinclient starts-up.

Video-memory: Only impact on max resolution and number of displays to attach.

RAM: Maybe USB-Transfer Speed? Don’t know.

Do you agree? Any experiences?

[MartinE11]

I would also be interested in how to setup a proper test-environment. How did you guys evaluate your zero/thin clients?

Every contribution is appreciated

[HussamRabaya]

i agree with you 100%,

its more in fancy configuration than requirements

we start look in the device configurations is some cases :

1-  if the end users is designer (work vDesktop with GPU), you need more processes and memory to accommodate with high FPS

2- if you need HD video or steaming , you have to look in processor power too , and more resolution and more monitors need too

3- when more number of monitors is required foe the end user , as some zero client support 2 and some 4

4- OS level is important to support Horizon features (e.g windows OS is required for scanner redirection, protocol support  )

5- device management force you some time to have more disk space especially if you want to save logs

6- health care always looking for POE devices and touch screen (some times) 

7- total number of USB ports is very important

[MartinE11]

Thanks for your input.

Looks like it is going to get hard to quantify the quality and compare the clients.

I could imagine, that with no vGPU onliest difference noticable will be bootup time + hardware interfaces provided, and for sure the whole managment aspects.