Calming admins and managers--experiences from four years using thin client technology in a hospital environment

End user desktop computers in a hospital are often full-blown and rich featured PCs. But the distribution of this kind of "computing power" causes big efforts in administration and maintenance and--considering the total cost of owning a PC--is associated with high expenditures of financial and human resources. At the university hospital of Cologne thin client technology is used as an end user desktop device wherever possible. Experiences from four years using this technology are described in this paper.