When I started working with computers way back in the good old days of computing, when we had 80Mb hard disk drives the size of washing machines (I kid you not!), I would use what was called a dumb terminal. This looked like a PC in that it had a screen, although with no graphics capabilities, and a keyboard, but had no local resources for computing and relied on a large central computer to do all the work.

This model called the client server model, apart from demonstrating how ancient I am, was the standard computing model at the time, but went somewhat out of fashion with the rise of the PC. Although this approach never really went away completely, it has recently been making a comeback for a number of reasons.

Firstly with the continuing rise of web based applications, there is less and less need for significant local compute power; you just need to run a browser. Secondly a lot of home users and office workers rarely, if ever, really use all the computing power of their PC when running their email, browser and the odd office application. Thirdly any system that is centrally managed is far easy to administer. Do what to upgrade a program on one central server, or go around every PC that uses that program and do the same upgrade multiple times? This approach is now being looked at again for small business and in areas like education as there are also potential cost benefits to this approach. It is not so obvious in the home environment, but is a good potential model for a home which owns a lot of computers and where there is a lot of “support” required. I personally thought about it as an approach on a number of occasions.

The term “thin client” has come to be the term used to describe the low power computing devices that managed the experience for a user. Thin because the device does not have to have a thick layer of applications installed. An operating system, capable of supporting a network and a web browser are probably the minimum requirements. A number of the hardware vendors now provide relatively inexpensive thin clients, a good example of which is the HP T5720 Thin Client Desktop. Of course for the technical minded or for those on a budget, older hardware can be remodeled as a thin client, potentially extending their useful life.

Has anyone tried implementing a thin client solution at home, in a business or at a school? It would be interesting to hear about your experience.