Jack PC - Wall-Socket PC

UK based company Jade Integration has unveiled a thin client device that is literally the size of a network wall port, meaning there's no longer a need to have a PC on your desk at all.

Your monitor, keyboard & mouse simply plug straight into the wall-mounted unit. It is the latest in the ever-growing range of thin clients which are rapidly replacing PCs as a more effective desktop computing solution for modern businesses.

The Jack PC terminals consume just 5W of electricity - about 20 times less than a typical desktop PC. When you consider a PC is sitting there using 80-100W of electricity while the CPU is only 1% utilised it's no wonder so many organisations are looking to make the switch.

The Jack PC terminals utilise the latest AMD Au 1550 RISC processors running at either 333 or 500MHz. They have either 32 or 64MB flash memory to store the operating system (Windows CE .NET 4.2/5) and 64 or 128MB RAM. They can be powered either through a plug on the front or, ideally, using Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE means the unit is powered over existing structured network cabling from a suitable PoE switch or PoE power injector.

How does it work?
The Jack PC runs Windows CE and can be used in three ways. For best performance use the in-built Citrix ICA client to connect to an existing Citrix server infrastructure, giving you a feature-rich, high speed Windows desktop over any network.

Alternatively you can use the in-built Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client to connect to any Windows server environment running terminal services.

Finally, if you don't have an existing terminal server infrastructure, the Jack PC has Internet Explorer 6.0 built in which can be used to access the internet or any browser driven applications.