Thin Client Revived?

Tech Central Station has an article arguing the revival of thin clients.

Thin clients are minimalised computers, complete with a screen, keyboard and mouse, with just enough processing power and memory to store user details and log in into a grander system. This larger network will then provide the needed processing power and storage space. Thin clients' clear advantage over conventional setups is its simplicity, hardware-wise, making per unit costs so low it can be given away to free, provided that you use specific products or subscribe to a particular service.

In fact, due to its low initial investment, thin clients have a distinct edge that extends beyond what the article suggests. Thin clients can act as web browsers alone very comfortably. Companies using very specific and limited range of programs can subsitute full-fledged desktop for thin clients for their employees. The applications are countless, but perhaps what most people are most concerned with, especially hardware manufacturers, is will thin clients ever make it to the popular mass?

The technologies for thin clients have already arrived. People are however still skeptical about it, because a network failure will eventually bring down everyones' connected to it. There's nothing as trusty as one's very own hard disk, CD-R and thumb drive. At least, I've only myself to blame if I lose my two hours worth of effort to a local power surge or a hard disk failure. A network failure is simply unjustifiable. I can't swallow that. Many can't either.

Until the day when networks are almost 100% reliable, 99% just wouldn't do, I'll stick to my desktop. Even then, I think some company will manufacture a memory card add-on to my feeble thin client, just for paranoid people like me who simply refuse to leave the fate of my efforts to the server admin I don't even know.