Sun close to home thin-client
Chris Jenkins
MARCH 28, 2006 THIN-CLIENT computing may be about to move from office to home, as Sun works with an internet provider on a package based on its Sun Ray thin-client and StarOffice software. Sun Australia managing director Jim Hassell said the system, bundled with a broadband connection, would be ready to make its debut when pricing had been finalised. The system, which uses the Sun Ray 170 thin client with 17in screen, had passed the proof-of-concept stage and had proceeded to a trial. Sun was working with its internet service provider partner to decide on pricing for the service, he said. "Really, the debate is about the price."
How to stick it to Bill Gates. Get everyone using Sun’s Solaris OS and Star Office then offer other services over the ‘Net. Store everyone’s data online through a fast broadband connection. Who cares if your hard drive crashes? All your data is safe and you just format and reinstall or put in a new hard drive and off you go again.
There’s speculation that Google has the same idea. We already know they use their own Desktop OS in their offices. We already know "Google has purchased Writely. Writely is a collaborative word processor that runs in a web browser. ". The new frontier is having your applications served from the web.. an Application Service Provider (ASP) has your applications online and can keep your data safe online as well. Your home computer doesn’t have to know anything except how to connect to the internet and to the ASP. You don’t have to upgrade your software when a new version comes out. The ASP will just roll out the new version on their own services. I expect we will see many more applications going this way. It won’t be too long before you don’t install your games locally. The Games ASP (GASP?!) will keep a local copy of a game on their server and give you access to it when you log in. This also saves them on piracy. If you don’t have a login, you don’t have a copy of the game. The only issues being when your phone line/cable connection/wifi goes down and you have a useless computer with no access to your data. I expect they will have to work out some way around that.
