I have been trying to build a computer lab for an upcountry school in Kenya. The biggest problem we have is that there is no mains power. We have solar to charge batteries and so need to have a 12v system. Can Ndiyo work on 12v?

The problem has been that most people haven’t been using actual Thin Clients, but full fledged computers instead. That and the belief that we must have Microsoft Windows (and the associated CAL costs) with each client/server.

I think what is important is to draw attention to the fact that using “free/cheep” old hand me down computers as thin clients is often neither cheep OR free…or easy. And while initially more expensive, in the long run using technology designed to do the job will be easier and cheaper.

Couple that with people getting over what constitutes a “server” and realizing that modern desktop computers are perfectly capable to act as servers in a lot of situations where redundancy is not that critical is the real shift… and not the act of setting up true thin clients.

That said, it’s awesome to see someone actively putting trials in place of true Thin Client solutions, and taking the steps to make a basic setup easy to use and acquire.

However, adoption of Ndiyo here in our local cyber cafés will be hampered by one factor. Most of the time tracking software being used presently will have to be rewritten. The current time tracking systems are IP based, not session based.