Environmental and cost-conscious SMEs can have their concerns assuaged as a result of a new ‘thinner than thin client’ PC device that costs less than half the price of standard PC and uses just five watts of electricity, which will be available in the Irish market from today.
Northern Ireland company ShareMyPC will reveal today the tiny device no bigger than a mobile phone.
ShareMyPC’s managing director Patrick Rooney said the devices, developed by Silicon Valley-based nComputing, can save an office with 10 computers around €7,000 per year on electricity bills while reducing their output of CO2 by 20 tonnes in the same period.
Using the device allows firms to turn a standard PC into a virtual mainframe while up to 30 of the terminals would network into it.
“Our view is that on average only 5pc of the computing power of a desktop PC is ever really used,” Rooney told siliconrepublic.com. “These devices, which are just 4.5-inches squared, can plug into a host PC via TCP/IP and up to 30 people can then share using the power of the PC. The PC can be an XP, Windows Server or Linux Server. All they need are monitors, keyboards and mice.”
Rooney said the devices are being aimed at corporate, medium and small businesses as well as hospitals, banks, home offices and public libraries.
The device can also be used to access the internet and email from the sofa in the living room.
Rooney said the technology could also have educational implications, pointing to Macedonia which became the first nation in the world to provide PCs to every one of its 180,000 school children using the nComputing technology.
By John Kennedy
