You wouldn’t expect anybody at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to go looking for a less powerful computer. But there’s a effort afoot at the university’s Sloan School of Management to move faculty and staff away from full-fledged desktop PCs and onto less powerful network-based devices known as “thin clients.’’ It’s part of a larger “cloud computing’’ effort to give scholars online access to Sloan’s computer resources on all kinds of devices, even their personal smartphones and tablets. For over two years, Sloan’s computer labs have been testing thin clients, simple machines that connect users to powerful remote servers. Now the school plans to begin issuing thin clients to faculty and staff members. Wesley Esser, Sloan’s director of information technology consulting and support. said the school is “slowly moving into replacing physical PCs where it makes sense.’’

Comments

RaySum

04/23/2012 10:19 AM

Dumb move by Sloan. Any one who wants to use cloud computing can use products like Dropbox which offer plenty of free space. These also allow syncing across multiple devices. Frankly considering the diversity of software (work and non-work) that the staff currently use, I think many people will be left fuming. Not to mention, the back end costs pointed out by the IDC person.

who-cares-1940

04/24/2012 02:47 AM

Well, it's cheaper -- and possibly more secure -- but it would be back to the future for me and I wouldn't want to do that. When I first started using computers it was a similar situation. I worked at terminals connected to central minicomputers, such as Xerox' Sigma 7 and Digital's DEC10. There were no graphics or web, and we didn't call them servers back then, but the principle was the same. For instance, Google's GMail is being hacked all the time, but my mail is safely on my computer.