Maximizing the end user experience (this is a “ticket” to entry – end user experience must be comparable to at least low-end traditional PCs) Minimizing acquisition cost (as a result traditional PC components are frequently used rather than more expensive server components) Maximizing density (because if these devices are to replace millions of traditional PCs by moving into datacenter they must minimize the amount of expensive datacenters space they require) Minimizing power consumption (minimizing power input and heat output in a datacenter is critical to keeping data centers properly cooled and datacenter costs down - see HVAC) Similar to traditional PCs to deploy and integrate (ease of integration is critical, or the barriers to adoption will prohibit widespread success for the category) Easy to manage with the same tools used for other datacenter based HW and SW (otherwise it becomes onerous extra work) Related client solutions Blade workstation: These solutions tend to be much more expensive than the traditional blade PCs, and befitting their more high-end specs, they are much more capable. Virtual PC: Unlike blade PCs, some vendors of virtualization software (such as ESX from VMware) have recently popularized the idea of using a hypervisor such as ESX to create multiple Virtual Machines (VM) that sit on top of the hypervisor, and load a client operating system in each VM. The goal then is to maximize the number of users per server to minimize acquisition cost while not so compromising the end user experience to make it too poor to use. So unlike the blade PC solutions described above, in a virtualized model all end users share the underlying hardware resources. See also Nettop Remote Graphics Software Blade server PCoIP References Microcomputers Thin clients Personal computers