Technical Support: Q & A

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Thin Clients

The term "Thin client" is a vague term that may have multiple interpretations. Things like PDAs are also called thin clients, and we do not work on them. Here is the difference between how DynEd apps work on a normal file-server client vs. on a thin client connected to a Terminal server:

  • DynEd apps on a normal file-server:
    When you double click a DynEd application which is installed on a file server, the application is loaded by the client and executed on the processor of the client. When you access study data, the data is read by the client and stored in the client's memory. The server acts simply as a file server for the client.

  • DynEd apps on a Terminal server with thin clients:
    With thin clients, all applications are executed on the processor of the server itself -- so if 30 clients are running simultaneously, the server is running 30 simultaneous DynEd applications. The thin clients are simply running dumb viewer applications. The Terminal server sends down images which the terminal app displays on the screen. The advantage to this kind of system is that the clients get nothing installed on them except a single app that knows how to display images.

DynEd on thin clients:
We have not done our own testing on thin clients. We do have one or two customers who have successfully run DynEd courseware on thin clients and a Citrix server. The best way is to have a customer try it out using a real course.

Limitations:
The main issues will be getting QuickTime, audio recording and playback to work. With Terminal servers and thin clients, it generally requires a powerful server and a good IT staff.


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