Thin Clients Still Face Uphill Battle

PenguinCandidate writes "Even after Australian open source vendor Cybersource put on some weight with its Linux 'not-so-thin' thin client product, analysts and users of current thin client deployments still see an uphill battle ahead for the technology. Maybe thin isn't in as long as that plain old PC keeps humming along on your desk?"

Comments

Re:The 80s called, they want their technology back

[llefler]

Except that companies are feeding the Microsoft money machine and migrating to terminal services. PC management has become a nightmare. But with TS you can keep everyone on the same version of Office and the rest of your standard app suite. And if it starts to get slow you just upgrade/add a server. Network? 100mbit at the desktop and gigabit in the server room works fine. RDP and X are really not that bad compared to HTTP.

MS started by giving free TS client licenses with W2K and XP, now that they've started to hook enterprise size companies, they roll out 2003 and force new licenses. But they will nicely bundle it in your software assurance package for you.

Personally, I've recently invested in a thin client for home. $150 plus a monitor. In the future I'll probably upgrade my server (debian), and start replacing PCs with more thin clients. At $300 a pop (terminal and LCD), it's not a problem to put one in the living room, kitchen, etc. Even in a home environment it saves a lot of time on administration. Network isn't a big deal, my cheap server (Dell 400sc) has a gigabit network card. My 8 port PowerConnect gigabit switch was less than $100.