Back to the future

In the not too distant past, users accessed mainframe computers from dumb terminals. In today's terminology, 'thin clients' are remarkably similar - network devices that have the ability to process information independently but rely on servers for applications, data storage, and administration.

Such thin clients, with little or no installed software on them per se, but with access to software that is managed and delivered by network servers, is an attractive proposition for many businesses, especially in terms of cost, security and software upgrading.

But there has been a performance problem associated with such machines espcially when it comes to handling multimedia - they simply haven't had the whoomph associated with their fully-fledged "thick-client "cousins which have all the bells and whistles expected from a desktop PC.

Now, Teradici, a Canadian start-up based in Vancouver aims to change all that. The company's concept is simple - to allow design engineers to bridge a true PC or workstation "computing experience" over a network.