I’m waiting for a rotary cellphone before i get one. Laugh all you want. When the client server fashion started making our VAXen obsolete, and the executive row secretaries were given 386 PCs and had to give up, kicking and screaming, their Wangs and Selectrics, and the high school educated data entry clerks were to given those shiny IBM ATs and had to give up their VT100s, our IT VP said, to me, it’ll come back around, just wait and see.
Flash forward to 2007. I’ve got a Dell laptop on my desk, an old Dell desktop running Linux and a twelve year old Sun workstation. One of my engineer pals upstairs has a 21 or more inch screen attached to a dumb terminal, admittedly smarter than a 20 year old VT100, connected to a server in the data center, today’s equivalent of a VAX mini, and he can run all three OS’ on that screen simultaneously.
P.S. The company that had to a dozen or so years ago replace the $250 VT100s and VT220s, well over a thousand of them, with $2500 PCs just to follow the IT trends, and of course, train the data entry clerks, p[urchase software and support PCs now instead of cheap terminals, soon thereafter went belly up, Chapter 7. Client server - that’ll save you money, Mr Chairman.