My university has recently build a really amazing new library. It's architecture is pretty stunning, imho. Of course, it was WAY over budget, but hey, spending a few million on great architecture - I'm not even that opposed to it. Though they cut all college hours by a few % to pay for it... Aaah well.
There are a lot of PC's in there. They use thin clients, win Xp... Big, 19" screens, nice keyboard and mouse. Feels like they choose the wrong resolution, though (non-native). I can't change it, the whole thing is locked down pretty heavy.
So. And how is the performance on those things? Well, it depends. Sometimes, the Start menu reacts in 2-3 seconds, but it can be minutes. It often takes me 3 minutes to start Calculator... It's very irregular, though. SPSS runs reasonably fast, at least when doing it's calculations. Yet, every time I middleclick a link in IE 7, it takes at least a minute before the new tab is opened.
Those of you with a lot of work to do and slow hardware know how frustrating this is.
Aaah, well, that gives some time to play...
