“Thin clients are dead. Long live thin clients. That seemed to
be the message this week when, no sooner had Lotus pulled the
plug on eSuite, the product that was supposed to light a fire
under the thin-client market, than Sun Microsystems and its
allies were announcing what amounted to Thin Client II, the
Sequel.”
“…the design of many of the first thin-client devices was
seriously flawed. The JavaStation, for example, turned out to have
its own—albeit thin—operating system that would, yes,
need to be maintained and upgraded from time to time. eSuite was
late and limited. The initial version, for example, didn’t run on
PCs or integrate with Notes.
Most significantly, though, the first wave of thin clients
stalled when Microsoft, Intel and PC hardware OEMs responded by
aggressively driving down the price of entry-level PCs and
introducing Windows-friendly “thinish” clients of their own.
Suddenly, a $600 graphical terminal didn’t look like such a great
deal.”
“So does this second wave of thin clients have a better chance
of dethroning the PC? I don’t think so.”