Re: Thin Clients

[PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The problem with Thin Clients has been that PC prices plummeted just as TCs
were becoming interesting.  With PC prices in the cellar, and TC prices
-higher-, well, 'Cheaper is [obviously] beter.'

Now, however, corporations are starting to realize that cheaper is not
always better; the support and administration costs you mention are making
more of an impact.  Now TCs are looking more and more attractive.

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@ix.netcom.com




>I think Thin Clients are on their way in. The market is just beginning to
>take them seriously even though they have been talked about for a long time.
>Think of big companies that have 1000s of PCs to administer- lots of money
>is wasted for many things like users installing non-work related software
>that causes problems, etc. Thin clients address this kind of problem-
>upgrades are done on the server not the client, the hardware is cheaper to
>begin with, and administration costs are much lower. Not to mention more and
>more applications are becoming available for thin clients. Java is becoming
>the preferred language for programming them too. There are now already a
>couple of Office-style packages available (Star Office, and whichever IBM
>offers for its thin clients) and the idea of application serving is also
>gaining momentum. The change won't happen overnight, but it is definitely
>the future. It will also spread over the Internet-- instead of using things
>like Hotmail, you will have java applets which are much faster, but you
>still keep the emails themselves (the data) on a server somewhere else do
>your data is portable and it doesn't matter which computer you use... in a
>way, HTML in the browser is sort of the first popular thin client.
>
>Luther


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