A Comparison of Four End-User Devices as Thin Clients for Public Access to the Internet in Poor Communities

Abstract

In poor areas, where ICT infrastructure is being deployed with developmental aims, there is a need to provide appropriate, sustainable technologies that meet the needs of the local community. Current trends for ICT interventions favour the use of mobile user equipment, such as tablets and cellphones, but we think that they are inappropriate to allow production as opposed to mainly consumption of digital content, at least for the foreseeable future. Thus our objective is to reduce the cost of deployment of traditional communal Internet Access Points using PCs. In this paper we compare four candidate computers to be used as thin clients in such settings, according to seven different categories. Our study identifies the strengths, weaknesses and problems of each device, and concludes with recommendations for anybody wishing to deploy such devices as Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) thin clients in a public Internet Access Point.

A. Terzoli—This work was undertaken in the Distributed Multimedia CoE at Rhodes University, with financial support from Telkom SA, Tellabs, Genband, Easttel, Bright Ideas 39, THRIP and NRF SA (TP13070820716). The authors acknowledge that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and that none of the above mentioned sponsors accept liability whatsoever in this regard.