[K12OSN] how about a live CD or live usb hard drive?

[Jim Kronebusch]

> Jim, you mentioned 5 clients being the limit on this
> type of machine.  That's good info to know.  What, in
> your opinion, is the limiting factor in your case? 
> RAM?  CPU?  Would a P4 (rather than a Celeron) make a difference?

I'm no expert here but I would put my money on RAM.  512MB is barely
enough to run its own OS let alone other clients.  But it works good for
a few clients or maybe for home use.  

The only problem I see with a external USB drive is booting from it, and
maybe speed.  You would most likely need to boot from a floppy or live
CD like you specified, but I don't know how you would point it to pull
partitions from the USB drive every time.  And USB for data transfers is
slow (especially 1.x).  Good luck, I am sure if you can get this figured
out many others will use it, like you not everyone can go buy a demo
server to cart around to schools.

Of course prod your local businesses and people you know.  I have been
running into some users tossing out their 1GHZ+ machines lately.  Not as
common as finding a 500MHZ machine but they are out there.  Especially
home users with WinXP loaded with spyware and viruses.  They go buy a
new machine thinking hardware was the problem and give away the old one.
I guess Microsoft does have its advantages :-)


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by the Cotter Technology 
Department, and is believed to be clean.