One computer to rule them all.

C

Clayru

New Member
I am currently in the process of remodeling my house and want to install the right computer system. I have a wife and 2 children. My dream is to build a system capable of running 4 independent user accounts at once. I would love to have just one unit in my bedroom, and a screen/keyboard/mouse in each room of the house. The wiring will be easy, I just can't find much info on systems designed for home use that allow multiple users. I would like to spend less than 6k on the unit itself. Any thought would be appreciated, thanks. :)
 
If it is possible I can't imagine the whole setup costing more then $2-3k. I know you can directly connect 2 monitors to a video card with 2 outputs, but hard wiring or wirelessly connecting 4 monitors plus keyboards plus mouse plus speakers is another story. You may have to setup one computer for you and your wife and one for the kids and then create a home network. Then you could probably setup remote management on the kids computer so you can monitor their usage (seeing is thats probably the main reason for all this?)
 
For 6K, you might as well buy seperate computers for all of them. It'd be much more cost effective. You can use monitoring software on them if you're worried about monitoring the kids.

Systems like you described do exist, but they're rather rare and are generally only used in schools and businesses.
 
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Yeah, being able to directly monitor everything was my goal, but sounds like maybe just slapping parental locks on individual computers is the easier way to go. Still I'm surprised there isn't more demand for this type of thing. Thanks for the input none the less. :D
 
You'll need to run terminal services or a virtual machine server, and even then a dummy box or thin client is still required. It would have such a high cost and learning curve it is not going to be worth your time and troubles most likely. Unless there is something out there that I am not aware of that does this.
 
There are not many times I would recomend these but the all in one screen plus computer like the one's HP makes sound like something you might like. Easy to install, few wire, etc. for each kid. I am sure you have considered this though.
 
You wanna just get a 6K Quadfire rig for the hell of it?

Or you could split the money across your family :(
 
^ lol

I would seriously not recommend filtering or parental locks. They are somewhat effective at blocking unwanted sites, but equally effective at blocking random things that have no ties to "undesirable" content whatsoever. They're also very easily circumvented.

IMO, a better option in the home is to use a monitoring program that will regularly send you a report of your kids' activity. Some send a full report, while others only include content that could possibly be questionable. Assuming your kids know it's there, the last one would be my preferred method because it keeps them honest while not making them constantly feel like their privacy is being infringed on. I've been under both before, so this comes from experience.

To each his own, of course...they're your kids, not mine. I'm just giving you some insight from the kids' point of view.
 
ScottALot said:
You wanna just get a 6K Quadfire rig for the hell of it?

Or you could split the money across your family :(
Click to expand...

A rack mount server with dual quad core xeons, a RAID 5 array with 5 1TB disks, 12 gigs of RAM, running virtual deployment systems or terminal services server, can probably run about $6k.
 
Wow that would be an insane build! Lol, pretty sweet though.

I agree with Drenlin though. It seems it would be easiest to just use a monitoring program.
 
well i could get a name of the program they use at my university where you can connect and monitor all the computers if you buy separate computers. so if my 5 friends were playing games during uni and the teacher is at her comp, she could just double click the program open it and see what everyone is doing, and also take control of the computer, so you can pop up those minimized windows/close/even show how to do stuff while in your own room.

so yep just give me the word and i'll get the name of it if you get separate comps
 
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AusLinda said:
well i could get a name of the program they use at my university where you can connect and monitor all the computers if you buy separate computers. so if my 5 friends were playing games during uni and the teacher is at her comp, she could just double click the program open it and see what everyone is doing, and also take control of the computer, so you can pop up those minimized windows/close/even show how to do stuff while in your own room.

so yep just give me the word and i'll get the name of it if you get separate comps
Click to expand...

Yeah, that sounds like it might be a good option. Thanks for the name in advance.
 
WhiteTree said:
I posted this in another thread, but it didn't get much attention. I'm curious myself how much effort it would be to setup multiple simultaneous users on one PC. Here's a link to one system that seems to allow it: New Windows software turns one PC into many - cnet news
Click to expand...

Just so you know, Microsoft's very basic server OS license starts at $1,000.00 and it is for 10 users only. So that is $1k you gotta spend in just the OS to do this. This new server software is based on Windows Server 2008 R2. Meaning it is an enterprise server product, meaning it is going to cost a bunch of money.
 
I was not aware that it would cost that much...

In the article I linked to, there was also a link to another company that makes something similar: The $100 box? It's already here. It's probably not what the OP would want though. ("nComputing's systems do not use chips from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices") - although I think this only applies to the individual systems, not the main system.

But perhaps there are other solutions for single PCs that could work well? (Though it seems the consensus here that multiple computers are far easier...)
 
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