Conclusion
The PT800TWIN is an odd beast. While it's admirable that Jetway have engineered it with MagicTwin support in mind, to go after the low-cost/budget/TCO crowd, you have to wonder about the implementation. It needs Windows XP, adding cost. A large proportion of applications released on Windows require you to have two licenses to run concurrently on a MagicTwin system, adding cost. While you save money on the hardware, you don't on the software.It strikes me that a Linux box, if the software you want to run is general commodity stuff like web browsing, email, and instant messaging, would be a better solution. You don't need a MagicTwin motherboard, you just need to do your homework with regards to your graphics card purchase and be reasonably competent with software installation.
Performance isn't an issue, the two users share the computing resources of the MagicTwin motherboard (including sound, something I haven't explicitly covered in the review) and there's little overhead. It simply enables a pair of concurrent logins on Windows XP and little more.
The board itself isn't the best either, with definite BIOS issues and a chipset that isn't the last word in Pentium 4 performance. Other MagicTwin motherboards implement a dual-head VGA core as well as the other MagicTwin hardware, removing the need for a graphics card purchase, lowering cost, so they might be more suitable in some situations.
It's a nice idea, but Microsoft's charge for Windows XP and licensing restrictions for many apps on the Windows platform seem to nix the idea before it gets too far off the ground.
Of course you can just ignore those restrictions and take your chances as it were, but for one of the target markets for MagicTwin, the business looking for really low TCO on its systems, that's a suboptimal approach. They will save money, but given the nature of the board on test, I'm not sure I'd recommend it, especially since no OEM seems to ship a MagicTwin system and things like warranty and support are crucial to them, never mind compliance with software licensing issues.
It's a specialist product that works well, but there are a lot of caveats to take into consideration before you'd do so. You'll know straight away if a MagicTwin system is for you, otherwise I'd maybe look elsewhere.
Cool to look at and very specialist in nature, it's hard to score the PT800TWIN. As a hardware implementation for MagicTwin, it scores pretty high, but given the bigger picture, it's harder to award it something similar.
I'll refrain from scoring it outright, consider the pros and cons hard before making a PT800TWIN purchase.
Pros
Allows two concurrent users to login to a local Windows XP installVery little performance overhead
Easy to manage software
Cheap board cost
Cons
Software licensing costs and restrictionsPerformance isn't terrific due to chipset choice, hopefully a revised version with PT880 is forthcoming in the future
Buggy BIOS with potentially serious memory timing issues
A software bundle of suitable, free, applications would have been nice
The hardware limits what both stations can do concurrently, especially with regard to 3D work
Light bundle, especially in regard to USB ports
