Wireless/Cableless KVM

[Disorganise]

Hi,

I have been tasked with cleaning up our training room at work. We have 9 PC's and desks, and a bad jumble of cables.
The gosl is to eliminate as many cables as possible for 2 purposes: 1) Looks neater, 2) easier to re-organise room into 3 different configurations depending on the vent taking place.

I thought I'd seen an article earlier in the year depeicting a display which wirelessly communicated with your PC, which I figured would be perfect. So far, a google search is bringing me only displays which have PDA style processers in them....surely that makes it an overgrown PDA which would chew battery life?

Can anyone gimme some links or suggestions?

I'm thinking of the following:
Locate all the PC's in one corner of the room, perhaps in a rack. Each desk to have a wireless keyboard, mouse and monitor 'connected' to it's own PC. All processing to ocur on the PC and the monitor just displays it (like a normal monitor does). Ideally an 8 hour battery life for the display, which is then 'docked' each night in the corner for recharge.

I thought about wireless enabled laptops etc, but people seem to be scared of them. Folk generally rather have a 'proper' keyboard, mouse and even monitor.

Cheers for any insights

Dave

 

[zephyrprime]

I think you'd have a problem. I don't know of anything that can offer as many channels as you need. Looking at logitech's site, they say that their mx700 only has 2 channels.

Microsoft's Mira technology can let you have a wireless display. By the way, Mira is the "overgrown PDA" you were talking about. But I don't know how many mira displays a single PC can have. And remote connections on windows are slow even on a wired network. The only way to easily do what you desire is to use wireless notebooks. I don't think there's any other way.

 

[Disorganise]

Thanks, looks a bit disappointing

I've had another idea though.....

Wireless Tablet PC mounted on a stand. By 'hiding' the fact it's a laptop, and providing a proper k/b mouse, the tablet becomes the display.
It means replacing perfectly good PC's, but they can be re-used elsewhere. But are there any tablet's with 17" viewable area??

cheers

 

[Tostada]

Umm, what kind of training room are you talking about? What kind of business?

If you're training people to use specific applications in the field, all of this seems really impractical. You want to train people on systems that will be as close as possible to what they'll be using. You don't want to hook them up to a terminal or give them a tablet PC. It'll hurt the transition.

The idea of making everything cordless and then recharging it sounds like it'd be a really huge hassle.

I'm really not sure what you're trying to accomplish here. Even if you get something like this and stick all the machines in a rack, that doesn't get rid of the cables. You still have cables going from the monitor/keyboard/mouse to the extender, then you still have to use ethernet. If you go and get wirless keyboards and mice, people are going to eventually walk off with your mice.

It sounds like what you really need are better desks. Good desks have little holes in the top that all the cables magically disappear into, and tracks for the power and ethernet cables.

After you have your cable problems solved, putting all the machines in the corner might be cute, but it certainly won't solve your problems in itself. It actually creates more cables, and more devices that need power.

 

[Tostada]

At my brother's work, a few of the training rooms use Winterm clients. I've seen computer labs with panel PC's that are pretty nice, too. I think this is the type of solution you were leaning towards when you were thinking of the tablet PC thing.

This kind of thing:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=56-155-001

A room of panel PC's can have a pretty clean look since you're getting rid of all the towers, but to tell you the truth if you had the right furniture, you could have everything hidden except the LCD/keyboard/mouse, and a nice thin LCD is going to look better than a panel PC.

The solution you'd like the most would probably be a combination of good furniture, thin LCD's, and CAT-5 extenders to put all the machines in a little closet or the back of the room, if you're sure your students won't ever need access to the CD-ROM.

 

[Disorganise]

I hear what you're saying re: the desks. Believe it or not, we already have those!

The training room is multipurpose and only used for internal employees - stuff going walkabout isn't an issue.

The guts of the problem that a) insufficient power sockets in the floor, which leads to a spaghetti trail, and b) the desks are constantly moved around into 3 positions:
Either face the front like the school class, facing the side and the room partitioned into two (so the class 'front' moves around 90 degrees, and the other half the room becomes a meeting room), or placed all around the edge of the room so the floor space is filled with chairs for presentations etc.

The moving of the desks is generally done by the admin girls since the re-config of the room happens several times a week. They are getting fed up with the cables and the fact that some of the PC's hidden in the desks have cables belonging to desk next door.
Burying more power outlets in the floor and re-cabling each desk properly will help for a while. Trouble is, once you start moving stuff about, cables tangle and it becomes a mess again.

Hence the wireless idea. The screen, keyboard and mouse are lighter without the PC, and lighter desks could also be used since the PC doesn't then need to be accomodated. Much better for the girls to move around
Even reducing to a single power cord per desk would be a big help.

 

[MrMaster]

Tell them to splurge on 9 laptops. Businesses love to shell out money.

 

[Carbonadium4]

u can get blade workstation, 1 cat 5 to the monitor and workstation sits in the server room, little cubes

 

[Carbonadium4]

http://www.clearcube.com/products/hardware/cport.htm heres one blade, i saw this in person... its okay.. but there are ones thats enclosed in a case into a rack

 

[DaveSimmons]

If each desk had a small (laptop?) surge suppressor you could plug both the LCD monitor and a light small-form-factor PC into that. Then each desk would have exactly 1 power cable leaving it.

In the desk itself, ties and those stick-on snap hook things could keep all the cables neat and off the floor.

A small-form-factor PC will keep the weight down. Dell small business has them fairly cheap, or you can get smaller ones for a bit more money. I've even seen PCs where the parts were placed inside the keyboard.

With anything wireless and battery-powered you'll likely run into at least one training session where someone forgot to charge batteries, making the lab useless.