Robert Pogson

You can tell M$ is in a panic. They are telling lies:

• VDI is more costly than running thick clients with that other os
• “7″ is cheaper to run than XP
• The thin client model is more complicated and more things can go wrong.

VDI v that other OS on thick clients
Let’s do the maths. If you run that other OS on both/all machines you are paying software licences multiple times for the same service. Of course they say it is more expensive. Notice that they do not include GNU/Linux in the mix eliminating the possibility of saving $thousands on each server and hundreds on each client. They consider six users per server. GNU/Linux can run hundreds per server. They are using 1gB RAM per user when GNU/Linux only needs 100MB or so because of file caching/sharing.

“7″ is cheaper than XP
Not likely because the licences for XP have already been paid. Businesses are not going to spend more money for licences they already own. “7″ needs much more expensive hardware than XP. XP can run on free stuff heading for the recycler.

The thin client model is more complicated and more things can go wrong
Fewer parts and fewer moving parts is less complicated, not more. There is no hard drive to fail, file-system to be scrambled and boot-loader to fail on a thin client. This is nonsense. You have a file server and a network in any case.

Further, M$ calls “office workers” demanding and needing better performance. If that were true they would already be using thin clients because with files already cached in the RAM of a powerful server there is no waiting for I/O. Office workers are the least demanding users of PCs that I know. They think IT is just fine if the machine boots quickly and keep ahead of typing. That has been true since P3 and thin clients are more powerful than that these days.

The study sponsored by M$ (“Bill Barna is a Principal Consultant at Lawrence Associates LLC and leads a consulting team providing benchmarking services to Microsoft and other technology firms.”), does nothing to help folks considering VDI except to feel Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Words like complexity and high-cost of software permeate the document. We have not seen FUD like this since 2001 or so when IBM was investing heavily in GNU/Linux and telling business that GNU/Linux was ready for the main stream of IT. Nope. This is FUD designed to discourage the world of IT to get away from Bill Gates’ dream of one licence and hard drive per PC.