It also represented a compromise with Citrix that essentially required enterprise customers to purchase both TSE and MetaFrame if they wanted to deploy resource-intensive applications. In Windows 2000, Microsoft will provide a more integrated and full-featured solution. Terminal services become part of the standard NT server offering. That's welcome news for administrators who to date have had to maintain a separate version of NT, including distinct service packs, to support terminal services. Microsoft has added several other new thin-client features to Windows 2000.
Administrators can add and automatically reconnect printers attached to terminal services clients.
Users can cut and paste between locally run applications and server-run, locally presented applications. Administrators will be able to meet scalability requirements by setting up server farms and dynamically balancing users across multiple servers. New capabilities include better integration with NT Performance Monitor, enhanced license management, greater control of terminal clients through system policies, better monitoring and management of terminal sessions, remote server administration via terminal services and full integration with Windows 2000 User Manager. By the time you read this column, many of the questions racing through my mind probably will have been answered, but I'm guessing the answers will not be satisfactory. I am writing this on Tuesday, September 11, the day we, as American citizens, lost our innocence.