Thin Client Computing Without “the Bill”

Trends in Corporate Computing
many years corporate America has been looking for ways to reduce the cost of ownership associated with Microsoft Windows®-based computing. For the last three years in particular, the popularity of Windows-based Thin Clients coupled with deployment of Terminal Server and Citrix has been growing at a rapid rate. In the last twelve months a new trend has been developing; enterprises are now trying to reduce costs further by moving to “intelligent” Thin Clients.
 “Dumb” vs “Intelligent” Thin Clients
In contrast to the previous generation of “dumb” thin clients, which simply acted as terminals allowing access from desktops to server-based applications, “intelligent” Thin Clients come with built-in emulation software; e-mail; a full-function browser—such as Mozilla Firefox or full Internet Explorer—supporting JVM, Flash and XML; and pop-up window support. These intelligent Thin Clients are served up with Linux or Windows XPe operating systems, and allow access to a file server as well as Web-delivered applications such as Lotus Notes, WebSphere, etc.

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