which is better “Thin client” or “Fat client”
comparitively which is better "Thin client" or "Fat client" and what is the future of "Thin Client Technology"?
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
May 31, 2008 9:21 AM
UPDATED:
June 2, 2008 1:23 PM
Answer Wiki:
Fat clients are generaly easier to build as you can go directly to the database, and you get to do everything on the users desktop. Fat clients are great if you have a lot of bandwidth between your servers and your users.
Thin clients are good for customer facing applications as they are ususally web based. They are also good when the network link between the users and the servers is slower.
Unless you are talking about thin clients as workstations. In that case...
Fat clients are nice because the user has the entire OS to work with, and they can do anything that they need to. This does create a support problem as users can do anything they'd like (that they are alowed to do). When using fat clients you do need some way to update users applications such as SMS.
Thin clients are great for support becuase the users just RDPs into a terminal server. If the application ever needs upgrading you simply just upgrade a single machine any everyone has the new version.
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Thin clients (RDP or Citrix) are a great solution if your users are distributed and version control could be an issue. I have 100+ users around the globe using a particular ‘fat’ financial application. Rather than installing the client on each and every desktop and dealing with the network traffic, I installed a Citrix server farm close to the data and have just one point of access control to manage rather than 100+. Thin clients are always going to be around…. think about it… your browser is a thin client.
Another thing to remember is that applications that perform well on a local area network (LAN) may or may not perform well across a wide area network (WAN). This is another consideration for using a remote thin client. Keep the transaction traffic closer to the data source. Your users will be happier with their experience.