Thin Client Technology in the Academic Environment

From research groups at the universities of developed countries there is a growing interest in providing solutions to problems of developing countries. In this context we have studied typical problems in many (educational) institutions, such as the lack of technicians who repair the computers, the administration of the machines, and also the difficulty to maintain and configure the old hardware available due to the variety of characteristics of the different machines and the amount of hardware breakdowns and software issues (viruses, administration issues) that the local staff has to face up to with their equipments. We propose a thin client approach that takes into account the human, hardware and software characteristics of developing institutions to provide a complete service for a computer network. The network administration is reduced to the administration of one server only. The maintenance of the machines is simplified and old computers can simulate the running of a powerful computer. Our proposal results in a cheap, simple (from the support point of view) and powerful (in terms of achieved functionalities) design.