HP introduces t610 and t510 thin clients

LAS VEGAS, USA: HP announced two new products in its thin clients range, the t610 Flexible Series thin client and the t510 thin client at its Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas today. 

Good timing one could say as HP has lost the No.1 position for thin clients shipments to Wyse Technology for the first time in the last four years in Q3 2011. It was also last year that the thin clients and mobile workstation business were put under the Commercial Solutions Business Unit of HP

The HP t610 features a dual-core AMD G-series processor with AMD Radeon graphics while the HP t510 features the VIA Eden X2 U4200 1GHz dual-core CPU with VIA Chromotion HD 2.0 graphics.

Both the models ship with 2 gigabytes of RAM, which doubles the minimum amount that has previously shipped on HP thin clients.

“With these new, flexible thin clients, businesses can protect their data more effectively, and they get an exceptional user experience with better graphics and video performance,” said Jeff Groudan, director, marketing, Thin Clients, HP. “We also made sure the t610 and t510 are easy to integrate and manage with a broad set of management tools.”

Increased security, flexibility and better performance are the value propositions that are being highlighted by HP for the two introductions. The t610 features both a BIOS that complies with the security recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and an on-board Trusted Platform Module that protects access to networks under the certification requirements of the Trusted Computing Group.

These features provide hard identification security for sensitive computing environments, giving businesses a second layer of protection for company data.

On the performance front, the t610 performs much better than its predecessor the t5740e.

Starting with a over 60 per cent improvement on the Windows experience index to a much higher remaining CPU capacity while running the WMP 1080P Video, HP has revamped its thin client product offering quite a bit.

The t610 is RemoteFX certified, and both the  t510 and t610 are optimized for compatibility with top virtualization software, including Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop, Microsoft RDP 7 and VMware View.

The t610 comes with two chassis configurations — Standard and PLUS. The PLUS configuration offers additional legacy ports, quad-head display graphics capabilities and connectivity options supporting fiber network interface cards and enterprise-class wireless. The t610 supports thin client operating system software including Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard and HP ThinPro thin-client enhanced Linux.

The new introductions are targeted at industries like healthcare, financial services, public sector and retail, where employees must often access sensitive data. The market for thin clients though is still relatively small and one wonders whether the category has created a sound value proposition for itself.

In the future the estimate is that 15 per cent of PC users will make the shift to thin clients. And to make that happen, the price point is certainly going to be a factor. The t510 thin client has a starting price of US$259 and the t610 Flexible Series Thin Client has a starting price of US$399.

The new devices are expected to be available from April 2012 in the Asia Pacific and Japan region.

The author is president and chief editor of SMG at Cybermedia.

(He was hosted at Las Vegas by HP for its Global Partner Conference)