Life with the Thin Client

Week one into my test with a thin client. From a work perspective, I can easily accomplish all of my tasks in this operating scenario. We have had a few hiccups here and there, but for the most part running M$FT applications on a Debian thin client has been very painless. I am using all of the M$FT Office 2007 applications including Project and Visio. For my test, I am using all of the big three web browsers and a couple of open source applications, namely a Jabber server client and an app called ColorPick. My only annoyance is ColorPick as I cannot figure out to shut it off with a keyboard shortcut. But I will get that resolved in the next few days.

So, at this point, I am very content with the pilot. I have also been using the thin client software from home across a VPN on my wireless network. The performance is almost exactly what is on the corporate network and all of my applications work flawlessly. As this is my first experience using thin clients,I am surprised at how well it works. I can't imagine why many companies wouldn't take this approach, especially those that deal with sensitive data. The security of a thin client and the ability to lock it down at the server level are very appealing.

All in all, a very satisfying experience and with the growing presence of available broadband, I ma quite content moving forward computing in the cloud.