What does it matter for Thin Clients have different hardware?

Question

By the concept of a Thin Client`ed network, if the thin client does support the comunication protocol and have the minimum hardware (and bandwitch) necessary for processing it, supose, 16mb of ram, and 100 MHz processor, what does it matter if it has 64 ram/250Mhz, or 128 ram, 500MHz... ?

I've read about the minimum requirements of thin clients and they are low, but I still see mostly of them with many hardware configuration, and "much" more memory and processor that the number given as 'minimum'.

Does this affects its performance? (I'm not talking about boot-time, but regular use of the station).

Answer 1

If you're using the Thin client in a Citrix or Windows environment, ie: connecting them to a server front end, the amount of memory is insignificant as long as it runs the RDP or ICA connector. All of the processing magic of the thin client in these configurations is on the server, not on the client.

The reason you can buy thin clients with more memory is that you can use different local applications on them, such as Internet Explorer or PPTP, etc. Those applications may require more RAM than a simple remote session.

FYI: I've been using WYSE thin clients for several years, connecting to Citrix Server.

Hope this helps,
WG