[NTLUG:Discuss] to sum it up...things have come full circle.

[David Neeley]

Mike,

Anyone who has set up a network as you describe is, to put it baldly, 
incompetent or has his hands tied by management who just doesn't care about 
issues like employee satisfaction and job productivity.

When Star 6 is finally released and they get rid of that stupid integrated 
desktop, it'll be a vast improvement.

Meanwhile, though, some of the more enlightened strategies for diskless 
workstations use operating systems and apps downloaded on bootup into 
silicon disks (RAM drives). Then, the apps are run from that part of 
memory, but all files opened and saved are done on the server.

Only when your system crashes do you have to download the application a 
second time during any session.

This way, you don't load the server up with both file/print services and 
application services. Multiple users on a central machine using a large 
application suite can become extremely slow, too. Much better just to dump 
the app down onto the RAMdisk, IMHO. I have used all the above variations 
here and there, and thus far this looks best.

Of course, I wouldn't think it'd be too cool to try to set it up to dump 
the entire MS Office suite into a RAMdisk at once. Few people would 
actually need that, anyway.

David


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