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.

Digital information, we have it, we all collect it and in fact we are collecting more and more of it all the time. As I have mentioned before everyone these days is likely to be experiencing their very own digital data explosion. Almost on a daily basis we are all creating or downloading more and more digital content, in the form of documents, digital images, mp3 files etc. This means we really have to start thinking about things like large disks to hold all of that data and ensuring we are making regular backups to ensure that data remains available.

Now if you have more than one computer in your household, and lets face it these days just about everyone does, you are multiplying this need for disk space and having to perform multiply backups. One solution to this problem is to centralise all your storage to a server, and by doing that mean that a backup only needs to be done once to protect the whole household’s data.

A potentially nice idea, but apart from setting up a separate computer configured as a server, there isn’t too many options on the market. Probably the only on is the HP MediaSmart Server. This admittedly expensive bit of kit which runs Microsoft Windows home Server provides centralised storage and can serve data securely to all users on a network, backing up their computers as required. If you are thinking about this sort of thing then the MediaSmart server is worth a look. I predict that we will see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.

Laptops these days have overtaken desktops in terms of sales, and from all the adverts in the media, you might be forgiven for thinking desktops no longer have a place in the modern home. In fact, in practical terms the popularity of laptops does mean that there are fewer manufactures making desktops at all and budget desktops are even rarer as manufactures are less interested in cutting their margins to the bone to get the price down.

But what defines a budget desktop? Well really as it is called a budget desktop it is all down to the price. My definition would be a PC that cost less than a given a price, and the best budget PC would therefore be a PC with the best specifications possible for that rate.

I generally set a budget price of £400 and with that budget it is possible to find a few nice examples such as the HP DX2300 Desktop. For around £350 you get an Intel dual core CPU, with 1GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. This would provide a very nice system, capable of doing most computing tasks, as long as you weren’t expecting to edit video regularly or play the latest games.

Have you bought a budget desktop recently? How and why did you decide on your system?

Dell is to remain focused on the computer business, so said Michael Dell yesterday. Dell has been touted as a potential buyer for the struggling Motorola group, and they really don’t want to talk about phones. Which of course means that Dell probably do have a phone in the works, or perhaps are looking at Motorola. If Dell really are looking at bringing out a phone, or buying an existing manufacturer, I am not sure that would be a good move for the company. It would show that Dell have moved from being a leader in logistics and efficient manufacturing to a follower of trends. Whenever they have tried that sort of thing in the past it has not really been too successful. What do you think? Should Dell stay focused on computers?

Motorola have also been in the news for having been passed by Apple in Q4 for numbers of “smart” phones shipped. That is pretty good going from a standing start at the beginning of 2007.

Apple does not look to be slowing down either, with the release today (in the US) of a new 16GB iPhone model in the States. So no 3G yet! In fact nothing else has changed on the new model except for the boost in capacity. The iPod Touch also gets the same treatment with a new 32 GB model being released, also just in the States at present.

There is no news yet when these models will be available in the UK, but I doubt that there will be too much of a delay.

Update: Good news! Both the models are available in the UK. The UK apple site must have been updated only hours after I wrote the above!

Apple was in the news last month when they released the new MacBook Air, which was different than the rather more widely expect sub notebook. While the Air is very thin and beautifully designed, it still is the size of a standard laptop. Small it is not! As such it can’t really be classified as a sub notebook defined by Wikipedia as being a small and lightweight portable computer with most of the features of a standard laptop computer but smaller.

An example of the standard offering in this space is the Sony Vaio TZ which sports an 11” screen. Which isn’t actually all that small either and neither is the price. One company though has come out with an unexpected winner in this category, by going for both small and very good value. The Asus Eee PC has been a bit of a revelation, ending up as a top seller on Amazon and often being hard to find. At a price of £240 you can’t fault it on price either.

So just what is it about the Eee that makes it so popular? Well apart from the price it does just about everything you would want from a sub notebook, a very small form factor (7”), a functional keyboard despite its small size, a good screen, and while it runs a customized version of Linux rather than windows, it is perfectly easy to use. The software includes all you need to browse the web, write emails, play media files, and provides OpenOffice for documents and spreadsheets. It also has WiFi, plenty of USB ports and built in Ethernet port so getting connected is straight forward. All in all a nice small package, at an equally small price!