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Some of the Newer Thin Clients are Dirt-Cheap General Purpose Computers



Some of the latest Thin Clients are Dirt-Cheap General-Purpose Computers

12-15-2021



I was disgusted when thin customers became popular in the corporate world in the late 1990's. They seemed like nothing more than a latest attempt by corporate to stop employees from buying online at work. My opinion on thin clients was unchanged until recently, when I was annoyed at not being able to find anything that could fill the gap between Raspberry Pi and older PC's finally compelled me to re-examine thin clients. I was amazed and awed by what I discovered.



I discovered that some of these newer models, developed in the last five years, are more than the modern equivalents to dumb X terminals from the 1990's. These thin clients are fully-fledged computers. They are also very economical and low-power. Many are also easily upgradeable than older laptops that had flash storage and RAM that is soldered to motherboards. The prices for used laptops vary from a few US dollars to a few hundred dollars. Since businesses are constantly selling old thin clients, educated buyers have a vast selection from which to select. Recently, I discovered more than 4000 available on Ebay. Contrary to Raspberry Pi's thin clients they can run x86 software. They can typically run Linux and upgrade faster than Raspberry Pi's. The cases are also free.



Since businesses purchase thin clients, they are designed to last, rather than to fail or become obsolete in some years, forcing users who are not knowledgeable to purchase new ones. Thin clients last longer than PCs.



Many Thin clients are upgradeable and can be used for different purposes if needed. In addition to upgradeable RAM and SSD's Some thin clients come with internal USB ports to boot from flash drives, or adding more storage or wireless keyboards (perfect for an HTPC). Some can even accommodate 2.5" hard drives. WiFi cards can be upgraded or added. Some clients can power multiple high-resolution displays from a single thin client. The HP T620 Plus also has the ability to connect an ultra-compact PCIe multi-port Ethernet video card or NIC!



Thin clients are particularly good choice for applications that do not require much CPU power, where the costs of electricity, hardware and maintenance are the primary considerations. Because of this, they can be perfect for repurposing into routers, firewalls, or web servers. Other applications for the tinkerer and consumer include retro gaming computers, basic HTPC's, dedicated Netflix machines, Internet radio appliances, WiFi extenders mesh network nodes, WiFi access points ZeroNet nodes, NAS's, email servers, music players, Zoom appliances (with added USB webcam and microphone), XMPP servers, and maybe even minecraft servers.



A website that covered many different models of thin client was found to be very useful when I was looking into them. This gave me a much better idea of what I was buying, and I would not have to buy an unrelated thin client and be hoping for the best. Parkytowers.me.uk has a large list of thin client specifications and links to detailed information about each model.



With the help of parkytowers's information I purchased an HP T620 (not HP T620 Plus) on Ebay for $26.35 US plus shipping and taxes. However it was not equipped with any stand or power supply. HP thin clients utilize the same power supply that are used in HP laptops. Since I have an HP laptop with a greater-than-65-Watt power supply, I am able to use it. The T620 comes with 2 or 4GB RAM and an SSD with 16GB capacity. The RAM can be upgraded to up to 16 GB and its SSD can be upgraded to as big as 128 GB. It also has two internal USB 2.0 ports to boot from an external USB flash drive or perhaps even attaching an external 2.5" USB hard drive to the inside of the case. The T620 also has four external USB 2.0 ports as well as 2 external USB 3.0 ports. Its 64-bit, quad-core AMD G-Series GX-415GA processor scores about 28% better in single-core Passmark benchmark tests and slightly less on multi-core tests compared to my 12-year-old Dell Latitude E6500 laptop.



When my T620 was delivered via mail, I was impressed. It is a hefty device due to its sturdy metal case, which is surrounded by thick plastic that has numerous perforations to allow air flow. The T620 isn't a fan, making it quiet and ideal for HTPCs. It reminded me of the Dell desktop computer for business, because its cover can be removed without tools. Inside the T620 was free of dust. It appeared fresh from the outside and inside. It was almost like buying an completely new computer for $26.35. I removed the 16GB SSD and booted my T620 from an external USB flash using the Debian command-line distribution. This should make a great web server or NAS. I was pleasantly surprised by how low the power consumption was during boot. It was only 5-6 Watts while idle.



In the coming weeks or months, I'll be able to test the T620 to see what it can do and then write about the results.



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