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NEC Hails Next Generation Of Thin Clients

Thursday, 08 March 2007 by Michel Roth

NEC has produced what it claims is the next generation of thin clients.
The US100 comes with advanced IP telephony and video processing thanks to the company's NetClient system-on-a-chip. It comes with VMware's Virtual Desktop pre-installed. The idea is that users will get a complete Windows XP environment unlike conventional thin client products which provide a restricted view. NEC claims its VirtualPC Center (VPC) provides much better graphics and IP telephony than conventional thin clients at forty percent of the price.

NEC has worked with VMware and uses its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to host up to 20 complete Windows XP sessions in virtual machines on its NEC Express5800/VPCC Virtual PC server. The client comprises a standard screen, keyboard and mouse plugged into the US100 box, which is about the size of a video cassette. It contains NEC-developed graphics and sound decompression chips.

Windows Vista is yet to be supported, but the company said because of its memory hungry appetite, the current thin client system would be unable to support 20 users simultaneously. It did not name a figure.

The US100 has no hard drive or fan; it runs silently and uses a fraction of the energy - 6 watts according to Kobayashi -- of a desktop PC. NEC has integrated its own management suite into VMware providing a management console for thin client administration. It has also integrated VOIP so calls between clients are of high audio quality.

The product is expected to be available in April. The cost for a 20 user complete package is $40,000 which works out at $2,000 per client.

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