zippyjuan

One look at a possible future: http://www.business2.com/b2/web/arti...022126,00.html

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JLemonjello

I think it is going to be QUITE some time before we see that. The mechanized harddrives will advance in speed as well as flash drives advancing in speed long enough to keep them around another 8 good years I would estimate. Flash is the future but a bit of a distance future I speculate. As far as all network based computing goes I think that will be even longer (20 years) because someone somewhere is going to charge a buttload for that and people will want to stay off it as long as possible. So I think it will be awhile but we will see.

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Jason Lemonjello

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Kevster

Ahh yes the notion of purely networked terminals has surfaced again. It has been about 2-3 years since it was last mentioned/attempted. There is this predictable cycle between architectures and I'm convinced companies try to pitch it to "be different" from the others in the crowd. The magazine whor.. er.. column writers keep bringing it up because they have to keep writing about nonsensical crap and after a bit of time, this idea has somehow lost it's stench and looks "fresh" again.

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My small adventures, my fears.
The small ones that seemed so big,
For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.

And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing:

To live to see the great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.

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bachviet

I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. The article forgot to mention gamers, who actually spend lots of $$$ to upgrade their computers. As games get more advance, more powerful CPU and video cards are needed.

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Merlin

As PC costs continue to fall why wouldn't you keep a PC. Now if computing power were expensive then yes, but as it stands now we'll keep our PCs

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Jeffbx

Hahahahaha! Kevster, you're right on the money. This gets dredged up about every 3 years or so, and sometimes vendors even buy into it (Sun is still trying to push a thin client). It doesn't take long for people to make the full circle connection:

OK! These desktop machines are too expensive, and it's a waste of resources. Let's take the power off of the desktop, and have a thin client & ONE powerful server!

Hang on, though. The thin client is still kind of a PC, and we want to simplify things even more. Let's go to a simple terminal. EVERYTHING will run on the server, so we'll need a mini, no, a MAINFRAME! Yeah, we'll have a mainframe & a bunch of terminals.

What? You need to run a custom app? OK, we'll go back to thin clients so you can have an OS on your desktop.

Boy, that mainframe sure is expensive. Maybe we can swap that out for some smaller servers.

What do you mean you need more processing power on your desktop? OK, let's just keep the data on the servers, and do the processing on the desktop. Hey, can someone get the Dell guy on the phone for me?

Merlin

It all boils down to basic economics. Companies etc are going to buy the most cost effective solution to their problems. As it stands now PCs are cheap (and this is the important part - GETTING CHEAPER ALL THE TIME) and widely available. So why go to a different system? You don't.

caribiner23

About the author of that article:


Sooo, he probably wasn't around when many of us were sitting in conference rooms in 1988 when Sun introduced the IPC "thin client" that was going to kill the emerging desktop market... Or in 1997 when Larry Ellison announced the "death of the desktop" and everything was going to be done over the internet with rented software... Or in 1993 when IBM announced the SP-1 server which would reduce desktops to fancy terminals hanging off their multiprocessor AIX server... or .. (take your pick of dozens of others)

Just like the TV people say about reruns-- well, it's new to me!

OC

Thin clients only work well in specific environments such as manufacturing - we had 50 people at my last job whose only function was to pull up various schematics from the server and work to assemble part of a product. That and email were about all they needed a computer for, and thin clients woulda worked nicely and more cheaply. (No spyware for one - some of those people had to be written up because they wouldn't practice safe web surfing, and HQ wouldn't let us lock them out of port 80...)

Thin clients will never be widely adopted at home though. Maybe some broadband service provider will come up with a cheap and easy to use TC for the home, but it won't take off.

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caribiner23

Wasn't this the original concept behind peoplepc.com? Or am I thinking of something else?

I just remembered another venture into this: in 1999 or so, Sun came out with their little Java computer-- it was smaller than the Mac Mini and stood on its end and had a cute little design. The idea was that you load up Java apps on your servers and give your people these things.

That went south right away.

Here's a link to an article by someone who opposed the 1996 proposal of NCs.