As my LinuxDevices.com colleague Henry Kingman reported this morning, Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to acquire thin-client vendor Neoware.
This looks like a smart move for HP. Endpoint security problems, including lost, stolen or otherwise subverted client systems, remain a major problem for enterprises, and thin clients offer one of the best solutions for limiting client exposure.
Neoware’s m100 thin-client notebook, in particular, has caught my eye, as it seems to deliver the sort of light weight, long battery life and smart network-resource leveraging I’ve been looking for.
What’s more, I’m looking forward to seeing where HP takes Neoware’s Linux-based product lines. Neoware’s Linux-powered thin clients offer connectivity to Microsoft’s Terminal Services, but Version 1.5 of the Linux-compatible RDesktop RDP client currently lacks support for RDP 6, the version of the protocol to which Vista and Windows Server 2008 now default.
HP could get off to a good start with its Neoware stewardship by stepping forward to provide technical and monetary resources to the RDesktop project to bring RDP 6 support to Linux.