Wyse Streaming Manager

Oops. This is a common pattern for me:

1. Install new technology.
2. Use new technology.
3. Realize there were better ways to install said new technology.
4. Rip new technology out and install it again.

If it is new, I don't think I have installed it less than twice. Sometimes I do it several times. Minus several points for productivity, but I usually gain in knowledge of how the product works and (especially) how it is installed.

So I set up Wyse Streaming Manager last year and wasn't real happy with how I set up the base image. This summer, I deleted the old base image and recreated it. I used Windows XP Pro both times but the new image has the shiny new SP3 installed.

Whoops! WSM doesn't recognize SP3 and so will not allow my streaming apps to work. So now I'm in the middle of base image creation #3, carefully avoiding SP3.

*sigh*

Wyse Streaming Manager

I've mentioned before that I'm no fan of Wyse. In past lives I've worked in Wyse environments and didn't find their Rapport software to be particularly intuitive and firmware upgrades without Rapport were painful experiences. Now the readers of this blog have told me that Wyse has answers to some of my problems and I find myself re-examining my biases. (Don't you just hate when that happens?)

The original problem I had when I began working in a public school system was maintaining aging PCs. (I say "aging" when I should probably say "Tell the Smithsonian I found their missing obsolete technology exhibit!") The problem was addressed by moving the district toward a server-based solution of Windows Terminal Servers and Neoware thin clients. We haven't completely moved over, but the drop in maintenance requests is already remarkable.

Unfortunately, solutions tend to bring new problems. Going into this, I knew that legacy applications and media-intensive applications would not work on terminal servers. I didn't know how many educational applications are media-intensive or how many teachers will only part with their ten-year old software when you pry it from their cold, dead hands. I run the risk of splitting our environment in two -- PCs for lower grades and thin clients for the higher grades. That's not good enough. I need to remove PCs from the equation or run myself ragged trying to keep them running.

Wyse Streaming Manager looks like the right solution here. I still haven't seen it in action, so I don't know for sure. If you believe marketing material then this is a slam dunk:

1. Put Wyse Streaming Manager in place,
2. Buy a couple hundred Wyse terminals,
3. Profit! (Well, if we weren't a non-profit organization...)

I'm going to contact some people and try to set something up. I'll post my observations after that. In the meantime, has anyone actually used this setup? Does it perform as advertised? What are the hidden gotchas?