At Sloan School, the PC may be a vanishing breed

Simpler and less costly ‘dumb’ computers connected to a central system are gaining favor

A cloud-based system with thin clients is easier to protect from viruses.

By Hiawatha Bray

Globe Staff / April 23, 2012

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You wouldn’t expect anybody at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to go looking for a less powerful computer. But there’s a effort afoot at the university’s Sloan School of Management to move faculty and staff away from full-fledged desktop PCs and onto less powerful network-based devices known as “thin clients.’’ It’s part of a larger “cloud computing’’ effort to give scholars online access to Sloan’s computer resources on all kinds of devices, even their personal smartphones and tablets. For over two years, Sloan’s computer labs have been testing thin clients, simple machines that connect users to powerful remote servers. Now the school plans to begin issuing thin clients to faculty and staff members. Wesley Esser, Sloan’s director of information technology consulting and support. said the school is “slowly moving into replacing physical PCs where it makes sense.’’

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