Is Thin Computing Getting Thick?

Thin Clients, Easy Upgrades

Some managers and analysts say other drawbacks are the need to upgrade servers and to buy server applications and licenses. But they say those concerns are almost trivial compared with the advantages.

Moving to thin clients "cuts some expense to maintain the machines, and by centralizing, we can hook into databases easier for analyzing data," says Matthew Paige, manager of technical services at Quebecor World, which processes printing layouts.

Analysts at Gartner Group say the consensus of their customers is that "fat" PC clients and applications require at least five times more support staff than thin clients.

The Computerworld telephone survey shows thin clients provide several advantages, including easier management, maintenance, support, and software distribution, followed by lowered total cost of ownership. And in terms of rapid deployment of applications, Gartner analyst Peter Lowber cites one company that upgraded 3000 Windows terminal users at 30 sites worldwide to Office 2000 in 4 hours. It would take at least 3 months to upgrade that many PCs, he says.

Security and control are important reasons for using thin clients as well, IT managers say.

"With thin clients, we eliminate the possibility of a client-side virus, since there's no way to input data other than on the keyboard," says Dave Hendrie, manager of information systems at Daewoo Motor America.

Lowber says managers should realize that users moving from PCs to Windows terminals will have access to the same applications with fewer reboots. "The PC has become a network appliance," he says. "Many PC users hardly ever use the diskette or CD-ROM drives because their information needs are met via the network."

A PC or a Thin Client?

A device that blurs the lines between a thin client and a full-blown PC is being deployed by EScreen, which sells an online drug-screening service. The company says it can give employers a negative result on a drug screening of a urine sample within an hour, much faster than the two to three days now required.

IPaqs provide much faster processing, at a slightly lower cost and with easier Universal Serial Bus connections, say EScreen officials.

EScreen created a patented urine cup (trademarked "eCup") and digital reading device (trademarked "eReader") that looks like a coffee machine. Both are linked with cables to IPaq desktops, which are linked over networks to an EScreen server, where the actual drug analysis calculation is done, EScreen officials say.

The drug-screening company gets the benefit of a compact desktop that runs some applications, yet the basic IPaq costs about $499, almost the same price as traditional thin clients that boast fewer functions, says Bill Whitford, EScreen's chief operating officer.

Compaq was the first on the market in late January with the new category of thin PCs, although Hewlett-Packard has released an even smaller box, the E-Vectra, and Dell and IBM have plans for competing products, analysts say. The thin PCs have all done away with serial ports, are half as heavy and much less costly than traditional desktops, and have limited upgrade capabilities.

Compaq officials say they're surprised at how much interest there is in the IPaq as a thin-client alternative but won't discuss sales numbers.