* ClearCube A Series PC blade can be installed for about $1,300
ClearCube Technology, a vendor of bladed PCs, this week is rolling out a blade that costs less than $1,000.
The A Series PC blade, costing $999, combined with its chassis and the new I8330I/Port access device can be installed for about $1,300, less than half the cost of ClearCube’s R Series blades.
The Model A1010 PC blade uses an Intel Pentium 4 Model 531 processor and contains an 80GB Serial ATA hard drive and 512MB of memory. It connects to the network over a standard Ethernet connection and communicates via the I833O1/Port over Ethernet.
The I8330I/Port connects the blade located in the data center or server room to the keyboard, mouse and display located on the user’s desktop. The I833O I/Port uses Transparent Desktop eXtension (TDX) technology instead of Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to improve video and multimedia performance. It also supports both A Series and R Series ClearCube blades.
It can communicate with any access device – such as a tablet PC or PDA – that runs RDP.
The A Series PC blade, like ClearCube’s other blades, is managed with ClearCube Sentral management software.
The A Series PC blade is less dense than the R Series blade – its chassis is 6U high compared to the 3U R Series chassis. It also uses a different processor than the R Series and has 75% of the ‘bells and whistles’ of the R Series blade, according to Carl Boisvert, CEO of ClearCube.
The A Series PC blade is available now.
ClearCube launched its first blades in 2002 and competes with HP in the PC blade space.
