This article tries to explain why workstations are no longer an appropriate tool for the present working environment, what the alternatives are, and what consequences it has for the development of OSes.
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Member since:2006-01-18
What to you is a stupid thing, may most likely be to the person who does it a great productivity enhancer. The whole reason that the PC has trumped centralized Computing services, is the degree of ownership the user has over the environment, that they are free to construct their own spreadsheets, to download/install a new tool, or use a new website.
Yes this does raise the total cost of ownership in terms of IT supported needed, but it has a great benefit, and the clear lesson from pracitcal experience, is that the benefit outways the cost, if it did not, we would see lots more companies out there with dumb terminal systems.
Users and business are generally not dumb ( even though they may not know the details and theories of technology systems ) they understand whats needed to get their job done in a more efficient manner, much better than anyone else.
In many ways its a parralell of the centrally planned economies ( where "experts" decide approach and "citizens" aren't free to make mistakes) versus a free market economoy when people are given ownership and are free to succeed or fail.. on average in an ownership society, there is faster progress than one ruled over by so called "experts".
Member since:
2006-12-07
There was an interesting idea about network computers some 10 years ago. The trend was, unfortunately, killed by Microsoft. They have seen it as a threat. Later they released Windows terminal server, which is a similar concept.
There is a psyhological problem about that. Employees often see their machin as "their own pc". And often they do stupid things with it, so someone has to reinstall, clean the viruses, reconfigure, etc.
DG