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Thin is in at Compaq

Remember when Compaq said thin clients were a poor substitute for the PC, we do

Bouts of amnesia are not uncommon in the fast-moving world of IT, but when Compaq announced its was launching what it called its first thin-client products, there was a definite niggling in the back of our minds at The Register. Is this the same Compaq that commissioned a rain-forest's worth of research into why the network computing model was doomed to fail and held a series of press conferences to tell the world's press how wrong NC advocates everywhere were? Apparently so. The lengthy delay in producing its first thin-client has been put down to the fears that it would cut into PC sales, but after sitting back and watching the success of its competitors, many of whom were scoring deals off the back of Compaq server deals to major accounts, Compaq has finally taken the plunge. Yesterday it announced the T1000, which supports NT and Citrix, and T1500, which runs on Linux. The company should have listened to Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO. Last September, he claimed it was only Oracle's head, Larry Ellison, who hadn't heard of the NC's death. And talking of U-turns, isn't it odd that just last month Oracle's COO Ray Lane spoke of his desire to drop NT and stated that the company had no plans to use Linux as a platform. Bandwagon anyone? ®

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