KENT KRIEGSHAUSER/The Register-Mail

Ed Rockhold, CEO of R Cubed Technologies in Galesburg, works in his office at the business the Bondi Building.

Multiplier maximizes productivity

Company teams with Canadian group on new Linux system

Sunday, April 8, 2007

By JOHN R. PULLIAM

The Register-Mail

Working with one of its partners, Omni Technologies of Canada, R Cubed has developed a system that allows up to 10 students to work at the same time with a single Linux PC. Novell Equipment runs the multiplied software.

R Cubed manufactures laptops, desktops and servers.

Nathan "Nate" Rockhold, president of R Cubed, said an Omni vice president "brought a lot of business to us. He approached us because of the reputation we're getting. ... It's always good when the vice president said, 'We're going to make you rich.' That's always a good way to get an entrepreneur's attention."

The system is being used in Danville School District 118. Danville bought the certified Multiplied SLED Hardware Bundle from R Cubed.

Rockhold said that 10 monitors can be hooked into "one souped-up" desktop computer. The Danville schools bought an eight-user Linux Desktop Bundle.

According to an article by Novell, Christel Powell, manager of information systems for Danville School District, said, "We engaged R Cubed's professional services to help deploy the solution in our schools. R Cubed's chief technology officer, Joe Ryner, supervised the setup of the systems and provided introductory training for our IT staff on the Multiplied Linux Desktop computers. The students were absolutely thrilled with the arrival of the new systems. They gathered around Joe while the systems were being connected and couldn't wait to login and start exploring."

"It was a good solution for them," Rockhold said of the school system in Danville. "Your hardware savings are there, drastic savings on your power consumption. Not only that, you also have a savings because you don't have to run your air conditioning as much to cool the machines."

Rockhold said Danville will save 50 percent on the hardware costs alone.

According to information provided by Rockhold, by using the "Multiplied Linux Desktop Strategy," Danville also has saved 62 percent on electricity, "and saved the district thousands of dollars on costly Internet drops, switches, network wiring and other infrastructure and support costs."

"It's ideal for schools, libraries," he said.

Rockhold said Danville did not have the electrical infrastructure available in its schools to run the number of computers needed if not for the ability to use one PC to power the eight monitors.

Information posted by Novell in March explained the advantage to the students.

"Each multi-station Linux desktop delivers exceptional performance. Students have access to USB audio headsets and can save their files to USB memory keys. The Linux Desktop Multiplier is transparent to users," according to the posting.

According to Novell, in August 2006, Indiana school officials announced it would be using 20,000 Linux workstations as part of the "Affordable Classroom Computes for Every Secondary Student" program.

There are about 1 million students in Indiana. Mike Huffman, special assistant for technology at the Indiana Department of Education, said the new program will cut their computer costs from $100 to $5 per student. Rockhold said there are 2.1 million to 2.2 million students in Illinois.

Rockhold said the desktop multipliers also could be invaluable to certain types of businesses.

"We're talking to a company in Tampa," he said. "It's a big call center."