and make little noise, which implies potential environmental benefits and makes them ideal for some computer cluster applications. Comparison with thin clients Major corporations tend to instead implement thin clients (using Microsoft Windows Terminal Server or other such software), since much lower specification hardware can be used for the client (which essentially acts as a simple "window" into the central server which is actually running the users operating system as a login session). Of course, diskless nodes can also be used as thin clients. Moreover, thin client computers are increasing in power to the point where they are becoming suitable as fully-fledged diskless workstations for some applications. Both thin client and diskless node architectures employ diskless clients which have advantages over fat clients (see above), but differ with regard to the location of processing. Advantages of diskless nodes over thin clients Distributed load The processing load of diskless nodes is distributed. Each user gets its own processing isolated environment, barely affecting other users in the network, as long as their workload is not filesystem-intensive. Thin clients rely on the central server for the processing and thus require a fast server. When the central server is busy and slow, both kinds of clients will be affected, but thin clients will be slowed completely, whereas diskless nodes will only be slowed when accessing data on the server. Better multimedia performance. Diskless nodes have advantages over thin clients in multimedia-rich applications that would be bandwidth intensive if fully served. For example, diskless nodes are well suited for video gaming because the rendering is local, lowering the latency. Peripheral support Diskless nodes are typically ordinary personal computers or workstations with no hard drives supplied, which means the usual large variety of peripherals can be added. By contrast, thin clients are typically very small, sealed boxes with no possibility for internal expansion, and limited or non-existent possibility for external expansion. Even if e.g. a USB device can be physically attached to a thin client, the thin client software might not support peripherals beyond the basic input and output devices - for example, it may not be compatible with graphics tablets, digital cameras or scanners. Advantages of thin clients over diskless nodes The hardware is cheaper on thin clients, since processing requirements on the client are minimal, and 3D acceleration and elaborate audio support are not usually provided. Of course, a diskless node can also be