You remember diskless computers, right? They were the hot new idea a decade ago, but for whatever reason, they did not make a significant impact among most government users. But that’s changing. These days, computers without local data storage are called thin clients, and they’re getting a lot of attention from agencies and departments newly concerned about security. Originally, the diskless PC concept was intended to save money. If you didn’t need floppy or hard disks, the computer would cost less. But with yesterday’s slower networks, performance wasn’t great. And not everything worked right.

A lot has changed. Today’s thin clients cost about the same as PCs at a discount store. Networks are faster, and more software works well on those machines. Finally, thin clients solve a lot of security problems.

What's a thin client?
Before you can decide whether to move your computing environment to thin clients, you should know what one is. In the simplest terms, thin clients are computers without local storage. In some ways, a thin client is similar to the terminals attached to mainframes back in the day. Thin clients can act as terminals, but they’re not the same thing.

To be a thin client, the device must have its own memory and processing capability, and it must have an operating system. Thin clients usually boot from their flash memory or a server elsewhere on the network. The operating software is typically Linux, Microsoft Windows CE or Windows XP Embedded. Applications reside on a central server, which also holds all data and handles other tasks that applications need. Thin clients can do nearly every task for which you might use a stand-alone PC. But thin clients cannot perform some functions or run certain applications.

In the past, thin clients were significantly less expensive than PCs. The competitive nature of the PC marketplace, however, has nearly erased that price difference. Thin clients now yield most of their savings through reduced management costs. For example, with thin clients, you don’t need to run antivirus or anti-spyware software, and you can manage everything centrally. In addition, because thin clients are much simpler and have fewer moving parts, repair costs are likely to be less. But that’s not always true.