Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

thin client
     
         A simple {client} program or hardware device
        which relies on most of the function of the system being in
        the {server}.
     
        {Gopher} clients, for example, are very thin; they are
        {stateless} and are not required to know how to interpret and
        display objects much more complex than menus and plain text.
        Gopher servers, on the other hand, can search {databases} and
        provide {gateways} to other services.
     
        By the mid-1990s, the model of decentralised computing where
        each user has his own full-featured and independent
        {microcomputer}, seemed to have displaced a centralised model
        in which multiple users use thin clients (e.g. {dumb
        terminals}) to work on a shared {minicomputer} or {mainframe}
        server.  Networked {personal computers} typically operate as
        "fat clients", often providing everything except some file
        storage and printing locally.
     
        By 1996, reintroduction of thin clients is being proposed,
        especially for {LAN}-type environments (see the {cycle of
        reincarnation}).  The main expected benefit of this is ease of
        maintenance: with fat clients, especially those suffering from
        the poor networking support of {Microsoft} {operating
        systems}, installing a new application for everyone is likely
        to mean having to physically go to every user's workstation to
        install the application, or having to modify client-side
        configuration options; whereas with thin clients the
        maintenance tasks are centralised on the server and so need
        only be done once.
     
        Also, by virtue of their simplicity, thin clients generally
        have fewer hardware demands, and are less open to being
        screwed up by ambitious {lusers}.
     
        Never one to miss a bandwagon, Microsoft bought up {Insignia
        Solutions, Inc.}'s "{NTRIGUE}" Windows remote-access product
        and combined it with {Windows NT} version 4 to allow thin
        clients (either hardware or software) to communicate with
        applications running under on a server machine under {Windows
        Terminal Server} in the same way as {X} had done for {Unix}
        decades before.
     
        (1999-02-01)