Best multiseat option?

#1

Was wondering what the best solution for a multiseat setup would be to split a computer between 2 or 3 users on the cheap but efficient… I other words if it cost more than a workstation setup then it’s kind of useless for my needs.

Little online research thus far seems to indicate it’s between vmware fusion, softxpand and something called userful multiseat…

Thoughts?

Software being used in this environment will be basic user software such as productivity and Internet. No intensive care or gaming.

#2

Unless you have an over abundance of hands to put to the task, and therefore you don’t have the hidden cost of setting up and maintaining such thing, for productivity/office work and with just two or three seats I would honestly not bother.
You can cook those boxes up for less than 500$ these days, and even if your system guys are only getting 250 a day, you’re on par and start losing money on the second day a single person works on setting this up.

If it’s something you will have a need to scale up or you have idle hands to use and so on, I’ve seen miracles pulled off with VMWare, including running ZBrush and Photoshop at speeds close to native on many workstations with both local and remote virtualization, and a number of other tricks.

I have never seen or used softxpand so I can’t help past saying VMWare works pretty well.

#3

I see. … this is more a side job I was doing for a local agency that was trying to save funds on equipment for administrative clerks but too small to consider thin clients which I have experience with in windows but believe it cost too much for their needs. I haven’t messed with any other options nor do I frequently these days … just thought in this day and age it would be straightforward.

#4

it does sound like more trouble than it is worth… perhaps some ebay 2010 laptops? :slight_smile:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitude-E6400-14-Laptop-Core-2-Duo-2-26GHz-2GB-Ram-250-GB-HD-WiFi-108/390865964829?hash=item5b016d4f1d

120$ a pop?

#5

It is fairly straight forward these days, but unless you work for crumbs it’s hard to justify the savings when it’s only two or three client to the one box for office/productivity applications.
If it was a dozen clients, then it starts being 5 or 6k worth of hardware and, say, a cut of a couple grands for yourself, vs 10k+ in hardware, that makes sense. For two or three seats that can be put together with less than 2 grands? I don’t know, I honestly wouldn’t bother.

#6

Fair enough. … I advised him after giving it some thought will prob just but a pair of low to mid tier workstations. you should see the ones they have, the 90s want their computers back.

#7

If using Linux it’s possible to configure X.org for multiseat use. This of course means the users would have to be comfortable with the idea of Linux, but for basic office tasks it’s not all that different from Windows.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MultiseatX
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xorg_multiseat
http://www.linuxtoys.org/multiseat/multiseat.html

Microsoft has Windows MultiPoint Server but I don’t know much about it. Looks like it’s geared towards schools.

http://www.microsoft.com/education/ww/products/Pages/windows-multipoint-server.aspx

There are other solutions out there but I think they rely on thin clients and virtual machines rather than multiple sessions on one machine with directly connected peripherals. I kind of agree with what has been said. For the price of a desktop these days it probably doesn’t make sense to do a multiseat configuration. Low end desktops can be had for $300 or $400 and if you get used stuff it would be less than $100.