Performance

As an informal test of the thin clients’ performance, we ran a pair of Java-based benchmarks that can be accessed online in a web browser. The first, “Sieve of Eratosthenes”, generates a list of prime numbers and measures the integer performance of the processor. The second, “Plasma”, tests graphics performance by continuously summing four sine waves to create an animated display, with results in frames per second. Higher scores are better in both tests.

It should be noted that these tools only measure local processing performance. When running server-based applications, performance will obviously depend on the infrastructure, such as server configurations.

Conclusion

All the models evaluated here have ample performance for server-hosted sessions. The HP Compaq t5720 has the best local performance as measured by the Java tests. However, it does not actually ship with a Java virtual machine as standard, which seems an oversight. It also seems designed to fit best within an HP-based infrastructure using Altiris management tools. Instead, we chose Igel Technology’s 5610 XP Premium as our Editor’s Choice because its Java performance is also good and it includes a smartcard reader for extra security.