Windows Terminal Services for Not Yet Techies

Windows Terminal Services is a piece of Microsoft Win networking software that has been available since NT 3.51 but starting with Windows 2000 has been shipped with the product. Windows Terminal Services provides businesses with the ability to substitute cheap terminals for relatively expensive PCs to access the network.

Windows Terminal Services makes a business's "big computer" -- the server -- work a lot harder, but can allow businesses to save a lot of money on the terminals or PCs -- the clients -- that use the server. This also gives businesses more control over applications. Need to upgrade? Just upgrade the copy on the server. No need to hire a techie to upgrade a zillion separate individual PC hard drives.

I recall when ALL computing by those of us without direct access to "the computer" -- which meant a huge mainframe processor kept in a special room always kept air conditioned (at a time when air conditioning was not universal) and always attended by men in white suits and pocket protectors -- was through a terminal. That's the origin of the name Windows Terminal Services.

After PCs became better known we started calling the terminals "dumb" because they couldn't do anything on their own. They were just a way to access and input to the "real" computer, the central mainframe. Windows Terminal Services.

Later, someone started hooking PCs up into networks. Later still, someone got the bright idea to return to the original model. Let a big computer, now called a server instead of a mainframe, do the heavy lifting while smaller and cheaper than PCs, now called clients, access and input. Windows Terminal Services therefore spans decades of technologies.

There can be many business reasons for not needing or wanting network users to have a full PC. Many work environments are dirty, wet or full of harmful contaminants, or just plain shake a lot due to heavy machinery operations. PCs are not comfortable in such places. Better to use a cheap terminal.

If you just want a warehouse worker to punch in a merchandise order, you don't need him to be able to access Microsoft Office. He's not going to write a letter and you probably for sure don't want him on the Internet - so Windows Terminal Services can give him just the access you want.

Also, terminals in isolated locations are much less tempting to thieves than PCs, since they are worthless on their own. (Though on my day job a burglar once broke in at night and stole a dumb terminal, as well as a telephone that's useless outside our network. He cut himself breaking climbing through the window he broke, bled and tracked mud throughout our office and got nothing useful.)

Windows Terminal Services uses the RDP protocol, Microsoft's Remote Desktop Terminal.

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