Desktop PC's and laptops are called rich clients today as your company has to be very rich to run them. As shown many times thin clients reduce power consumption, reduce maintenance costs, improve security, make disaster recovery, backup & restore faster/simpler etc. I know many customers where they have 2 admins and 2,000 thin clients, instead of 10 admins to 2,000 laptops/PC's. Desktop PC's and laptops used to be called Fat clients but the marketing departments quickly changed their name to rich, now is this because they cost more to run.

People want fat clients so that they can do their work if the network is down, however, how many of us really move around. How often does your companies network go down. Network outages is not one of the problems or recurring issues that I see nowadays.

With laptops if we want to show others our work, we email them the data/pics or docs, or we walk around the building with a laptop to a meeting room. The network is your feet. Sending/rather than sharing the data just causing the extra storage management problems. Walking aroung with laptops is a pain, I have seen many people who no longer do this as carrying laptops to/from work gave them illnesses like "tennis elbow" Yup, I did not believe it when I first heard about this either.

With a thin client Sunray we can also email all data, or just walk to other persons desk take their card out of the thin client on your desk and insert your card and they can see your data. No heavy laptop, no transformers to carry no muscle strain.

Now some workers need laptops, but if your company truely does some analysis who is mobile and who sits behind the desk all day, maybe 80% of your employees do not move so a thin client will be best. Fat clients for those that move around.

Laptops are no longer called fat clients, as the people who carry them around have lost weight and are no longer fat. I'm still fat as I work from home and use a thin client SunRay at work, but I did cycle to work today.

Like most issues logic is not that important, in medieval europe and in lesser developed countries being fat was a sign of power and wealth. With laptops when they were new it was also a subconscious sign of power, wealth and latest tech. Nowadays, being thin and being able to eat less fatty food and having the time to excercise is a sign of wealth and power. Thin is fashionable. With fat/rich clients will we have the same development, a person with no laptop has power and wealth as someone else carries this for him. Maybe a small hi-tech mobile/pda will be the next sign of wealth and power.

Technology as many things get warped into fashions and lifestyle choices. Crackberrys are another interesting phenomenon.

Written on a SunRay which is connected to a HA-clustered server in a unknown location.