Thin clients

[doug...@gmail.com]

Hello: I am with Crossroads International which refurbishes computers in Hong Kong and distributes them for free to disadvantaged people locally as well as to NGOs and schools in Africa.

We have been offered a large number of thin clients (HP T610) and are exploring whether we can turn them into standalone PCs. Does anyone have any experience with re-purposing thin clients into PCs? I'm thinking that our recipients would benefit the most if they had word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software on the machines.

One option would be to get the machines up and running with a browser and recipients can use Google Docs. However, I wanted to also see if we could have the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software residing on the thin client itself in case the recipients don't have Internet access. For example, could Apache Open Office or LibreOffice be deployed on a HPT610?

Thanks!