Re: Thin Terminals

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not against terminals. They
> definitely do have a place and are irreplacable: but
> personal workstations *also* have a place and are
> *also* irreplacable.

One of the biggest complaints against thin terminal is what happens
if the network fails. We all go home (and with best of luck stay home
all day, even if they did only take half an hour to fix it ;-). The
thing is, so many people I work with are at complete loss without the
network. They lose email, central document stores, and for most of the
people I work with they lose database and Datastage connectivity. Back
in the early days of my career, the mainframe (3270 terminals, hmmm)
only failed once or twice per year, so productivity loss was not bad.

Other attempts come, things like the "Java Termainls", you could say
either overweight thin terminals or underweight fat clients. They can
cache code and data locally, and use local processing power. Technology
is coming into place to do this, such as Java Web Start, or even file
systems such as CODA.

I've seen Solaris workgroups set up with cacheing network filesystems
holding apps (big CAD systems), NFS for user data, and working really
well. Its just a different way of working. For the management types,
Total Cost of Ownership(tm) in such a system is reduced because you manage
the software install image in one place and it automaticaly replicates
itself to all users. I've never seen a Windows system do that. Where I
work, IT support have to come visit to install or upgrade software on
every machine. What a waste.

For the home, if we can get the connectivity (a big if), having something
so simple, something with effectively no persistant state after power off,
will help the end user. The computer will become an appliance.

Microsoft did, rightly, see the thin client or Java Station like client
as a threat. They also saw the web as a threat. Appliances are a threat,
hence the push for WinCE and trying to make Internet Explorer the lock
in standard. It takes a big marketing campaign to make users care what
operating system an appliance runs. These technologies remove Windows as
the platform. Even now though, I develop to Java and Oracle, and don't
care really what platform is used - well, apart from I'm quite happy to
see my company considering Linux.

 - Richard

-- 
   _/_/_/  _/_/_/  _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield    at    ntlworld dot com
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 _/_/      _/    _/       neighbor's wall is on fire.   -- Quintus
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