The smart way to drive down computer prices for places that use a lot of them is to have several monitors to one hard drive.
It reduces the cost to a fraction of buying individual ones.
The latest company to market this technology is Userful Corp which has come up with a $59 desktop computer – £36.30 – that comes in groups of 12. Twelve monitors or screens can be run off the one hard drive and each can be running different applications or services simultaneously.
They say it reduces hardware costs by 80% and running costs like energy by 90%.
The many monitors, one hard-drive approach is already proving very popular for schools and businesses in the developing world but there are also advantages for Western businesses trying to drive costs down.
In an era when the chip in a phone is easily powerful enough to run word processing and internet browsers, it’s possible for one computer hard drive to power simple applications on many computers.
Of course this set-up wouldn’t work if everyone wanted to run video editing software but for simple functions like word and internet browsing the set-up.
Userful comment in their press release:
“At Cebit this year Userful Corporation will be demoing free software licenses for it’s Userful MultiSeat software which turns one Linux computer into 11 high performance
independent computer stations using standard USB devices such as the HP t100, Wyse E01, Goodway DU2600, Atrust m200, MCT MWS 8820, and DisplayLink devices.
“Userful MultiSeat enables schools and businesses to deploy more than twice as many computers for the same cost, while enabling up to 11 users to use different applications at the same time from one host computer, each with their own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. At just $59 per seat (education pricing), Userful
MultiSeat is the lowest cost computing solution available with the features and performance of a full desktop computer.”
See more on the USERFUL WEBSITE
Related: Children in Brazil and Asia get computers for first time with low-cost Linux software
Creativity, Cost-Cutting & Keeping it Simple: what the Developing World can teach us about Technology
