[LINK] Green web servers with netbook components

[David Lochrin]

On Friday 22 May 2009 08:17, Tom Worthington wrote:
> See also: "Microsoft adjusts to add support for thin-client 
> computing Increased tolerance after years of derision", 
> By Eric Lai, Computerworld, April 2, 2007 12:00 PM ET" 
> <http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9015280>

Interesting... It's all about officially allowing streaming of applications & operating systems to diskless clients.  While this has some obvious benefits, it also has significant costs (e.g. LAN infrastructure, boot time, tech. support) and in any case still requires "thin" clients with sufficient resources to run the O/S and all required applications (I wonder whether hard-drives are allowed for paging?).  And the minute an O/S goes on a user's desk it creates potential security problems.

(Not that I'd like to give mine up for an X-terminal, you understand :-).

The article states "The new licenses are meant to make deploying streaming and/or virtualized infrastructures easier and give "early adopters that want more flexibility to try out new architectures," said Woodgate [Microsoft]. The licenses are available only to large corporations paying for Software Assurance contracts with Microsoft."

It sounds to me more like a lever to encourage O/S upgrades, as someone else also suggested.


> Microsoft licence some Citrix technology 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrix_Systems> and have Remote Desktop 
> Protocol (aka Microsoft Terminal Services or Remote Desktop 
> Services): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol>.

David