> Both Microsoft (Vista) and Sun (LookingGlass?) are trying
> to promote better looking desktops which will be harder
> (need more bandwidth) to use via a thin client.

Even at its present stage, the Sun Ray used only about 20% of the available bandwidth of an approx. 1Mb/s network connection. That provided acceptable performance with Sun's version of the Gnome desktop but, as you say, it will not be enough for graphically richer UIs. It is possible, I am told, to increase the maximum bandwidth used by a remote Sun Ray client.

A well, a parallel trend is the increasing amount of bandwidth available even via residential broadband connections. There are already 100Mb/s connections available, and fiber networks being built via cable and phone companies to residential customers will make even more bandwidth readily available. Such companies could offer, as part of a service package, a hosted desktop session, since they would be in an excellent position to provision their network resources for the best user experience.

> poor multimedia handling is not a good selling point. It
> might be better if video/audio streams were sent direct to
> the client and buffered/decoded there. But that would need
> more computing power at the client.

There are many thin-client designs that push more computation to the client. The Sun Ray, on the other hand, does only decoding/encoding of protocol commands and some I/O on the device, and pushes everything else to the server.

At some point (10 years ago), I used to think that Java was going to move code to the client to process data in the thin client. But it seems now that one can achieve better performance if computation is done on fast servers (on a grid that distributes load among many servers), and then use a highly optimized protocol (and a fast network) to send just the needed updates to the client.

However, I also think that more work needs to be done to achieve the kind of multimedia performance that would provide a seamless user experience. If such experience were possible to achieve via a thin-client design, then the "convergence" of multimedia and computing that everyone's talking about (and that's already happenning - just look at the Mac and the iPod), might partly be happening on the server.

Interestingly one motivation for doing more of that work on the server has also to do with mobile devices, where you really want to minimize computation on the client in order to preserve battery life. In the thin client's case, the motivation is to reduce maintenance and, possibly, customer support costs. But research and engineering issues are probably quite similar.

This article tried to focus on the WAN aspects of the Sun Ray (and, by extension, of thin clients). I think in a LAN environment the benefits of thin clients are pretty much established. I just don't see many reasons why an organization would want to deploy full-fledged PCs to user desktops, since most work done in a business setting can be done eminently well via a thin-client. Perhaps there are special cases, e.g., graphic design or engineering, etc.

However, this sort of technology could benefit consumers as much as it can benefit businesses. While larger businesses have IT departments responsible for managing user desktops, home users are mostly left to fend for themselves when it comes to desktop management. At the same time, many home users use PCs for only a limited set of functions, e.g., sending and reading email, browsing the web, listening to and downloading music, etc. If there were a consumer-oriented Sun Ray optimized for these functions, I think that could really benefit consumers as well.

Will there be one? Could that succeed, or what would be the reasons against such a "deskPod?"

I don't think bandwidth is a limiting factor any more, since compression techniques and intelligent screen updates can work with standard broadband connections already. And cable companies already pump HDTV into plenty of homes. Usability and device support might some areas where such a product would have to shine.