Ethernet appliances/clients

I know we have had some discussion on "thin clients" but
I seem to recall reading about a ethernet device that
came with a "built-in" version of XP and a basic version
of MS Word.

No disk drives, just a box.

I realize that's a pretty close description of a "thin client"
but I can't find that article.

I have a customer that needs to move "slowly" away from twinax
and he wants to avoid all the handholding of collection of
pc's.

They have about a dozen pc's now, and they average at
least a crash a month and a locked up pc a day.

This "appliance" would be a good fit if they really work.