"Love it or hate it, thin client computing is coming back into
vogue. Dell aims to make it cheaper than ever.
"It's remarkable how the world changes. Technology has evolved
from green screen dumb terminals wired to mainframes through
powerful desktops back to a centralised model where data centres
are king again.
"It makes sense to have a data centre; you can store major
servers at a co-location facility with unbelievable bandwidth,
multi-tiered redundant power supplies and regulated cooling. You
can house massive multi-disk storage arrays and expensive tape
auto-loaders.
"Of course, the further your users are from their data, the more
painful applications and data management become. Whether those
damnable pesky Access databases that seem to pop up everywhere, or
your payroll application or anything else, you don't want to make
users suffer the frustrations of dragging data across WAN
links."
