[matt_morgan]

I love that this idea never goes away (in my first real career job, I supported actual dumb terminals that we replaced with desktops). It never seems to take off either, but it's always just about to. I don't mean to criticize! WorkSpaces sounds pretty great.

[bpyne]

I've seen variations work quite well.

The first time was in a startup company. We hired a brilliant and unconventional sys admin who was somewhat reminiscent of the Gilfoyle character in "Silicon Valley". After being hired, he took a few weeks to analyze how the user groups worked. Then he disappeared into his work room for a few weeks, often working late into the night. When he finally reappeared, he had set us up so that our desktops were running apps from the Windows servers. (At the time, we used Windows 3.51 on the server with Novell ?Netware?.) I ran everything from Powerbuilder to an Oracle standalone instance to Word (or Wordperfect) from the server. When I needed additional tools, he was very cool about installing them.

The second time was at a training session at Sun Microsystems' Burlington, MA campus. My first day they handed me a key card. The card allowed me access to the building and rooms I was authorized for. I also needed it for access to workstations. I could go up to any workstation in the lobby and authorized rooms, insert it into a card reader, and instantly have my desktop appear in the state I left it in during my last session. It was a fully graphical desktop. Absolutely eye-opening experience working there for a few days. It spoiled me. I've been looking for that experience again, but haven't found it.

[ghshephard]

These workstations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray ?

[msh]

They had those at my university. I loved them

[bpyne]

It was 2001 or 2002, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. But, that looks familiar.

[toyg]

In the end, it always boils down to network reliability, latency, and loss of power/control, which is where you pay for the convenience you get from thin terminals.

The control issue in particular will come back, it's human nature. Centralised environments are locked down to a level that someone eventually finds intolerable, so they start using unsupervised local hardware. It's the natural anarchy of the human spirit... or a reaction to the stupidity of people in power :)

[GFischer]

It's been one of the pendulum swings in IT... actually the company I work for has dumb terminals for most of its employees, and the people in charge of support are very happy (users, not that much).

https://outrunchange.com/2011/11/05/the-computing-pendulum-h...

[scurvy]

That was my first thought, too. It's the Network Computer again!

[peterarmstrong]

For the young kids here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer

[projectramo]

Same. (I love it too).

Although it is getting so close.

Dropbox and drive sort of get you to a half-way point solution.

[facorreia]

Case in point: "The Network Is The Computer"...

[Nexxxeh]

I was trialing (the now defunct) Nivio back in 2007. It was so close!