Thin Clients: Igel 

• DT Research
• HP
• Igel
• Neoware
• Relisys
• Wyse

Overview

Igel are german company who have been producing thin clients since 1997. These occasionally appear on eBay. My first encounters with Igel products were with the 2100 and 2110LX which I must admit I liked a lot. I found them to be well engineered and reasonable in appearance. They also had the advantage of using Compact Flash cards rather than DOMs along with a normal BIOS.

Literature

The one downside is that their website is very much oriented towards their current models. Whilst they do have a firmware archive for discontinued models there is very little in the way of information, publicity material etc on these old models, although, with patience and luck, you might be able to find an old brochure on one of their distributors' websites. However they do have a useful list (reproduced below) of End-of-life products giving the dates when manufacture and maintenance ceased along with the version number +of the last released firmware.

Model labelling

The final bugbear is their labelling. The ones I have seen are not labelled with their marketing name (eg 2110LX) but with a number like Igel 1/2. Web searches for 2110LX give you the information you want, searches on 1/2 generally only return "for sale" entries that have zero details about the unit.

It would appear that the X/Y label identifies the basic hardware platform. After that you get the variations of flash, ram and operating system.

A rule of thumb would appear to be that X designates the Model Range:

1 - Entry Model. Slow processor. Limited expansion
2 - Midrange.
3 - High-End. Fast processor, better graphics etc.

The Y number is the hardware release. This sort of follows from the 2100 (1/1) and 2110 (1/2) and 3200 (3/3) and 3210 (3/4), but I haven't seen a 3/1 or 3/2 yet. Certainly the third digit in the Model Number (eg 2100/2110/3210/...) would appear to change when the internal circuit board is upgraded.

As I mentioned earlier all the publicity material refers to the product name such as 2110 LX or Smart. With these the suffix (CE/LX/XP) identifies the operating system.

Models

When you find old ones for sale however they are often listed using the 1/3 style number from the label so you may not have a clear idea of exactly what you're spending your money on.

At the moment my best guess is:

Label	Model Range
1/1	2100 (early) Smart series
1/2	2110 (later) Smart series
3/3	3200 (early) Compact series
3/4	3210 (later) Compact series
5/4	4210 Winestra series

End-of-life list

This list originally came from http://www.igel.com/uk/service-support/end-of-life-products.html - now vanished. (I note that the current list now starts at 2005 - the earlier products have been removed from the list).

Please remember I have nothing to do with Igel. This list is here to give you an idea of their model range and how old that thin client you've just seen on eBay might be.