Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Thick or Thin? One Vision of the Future of Pocket PCs
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 10:34 AM
http://articles.pocketnow.com/content.cgi?db=articles&id=69
Russ Smith from PocketNow.com has written a column on the concept of thin client computing. It's a good read. The Larry Ellison-esque concept of thin clients everywhere and an Oracle server in every home remains a losing bet. Thick clients with local processing, storage, and functionality are the future of mobile computing. Bank on it!
"If you've been around computer technology for any length of time, you've probably heard the thick or thin debate in some form or another. It's basically the question of whether the computing power resides in the machine right in front of you or whether it resides somewhere else, usually working on behalf of a number of "workstations" at the same time. In the old days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or at least took up whole floors of air-conditioned space), it was a debate between "distributed processing" (processing done by the "big iron" mainframe computer and "distributed" to local "terminals;" also called "time-sharing," because everyone shared the processing time of the mainframe) and "local processing." This debate essentially ended with the widespread use of desktop PCs. The advantages of being able to do a quick 1-2-3 spreadsheet, as opposed to whatever passed for a calculation engine on the mainframe, were just too great."
Russ Smith from PocketNow.com has written a column on the concept of thin client computing. It's a good read. The Larry Ellison-esque concept of thin clients everywhere and an Oracle server in every home remains a losing bet. Thick clients with local processing, storage, and functionality are the future of mobile computing. Bank on it!
"If you've been around computer technology for any length of time, you've probably heard the thick or thin debate in some form or another. It's basically the question of whether the computing power resides in the machine right in front of you or whether it resides somewhere else, usually working on behalf of a number of "workstations" at the same time. In the old days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or at least took up whole floors of air-conditioned space), it was a debate between "distributed processing" (processing done by the "big iron" mainframe computer and "distributed" to local "terminals;" also called "time-sharing," because everyone shared the processing time of the mainframe) and "local processing." This debate essentially ended with the widespread use of desktop PCs. The advantages of being able to do a quick 1-2-3 spreadsheet, as opposed to whatever passed for a calculation engine on the mainframe, were just too great."
