You might guess, with the recent introductions of stripped-down terminals from Sun Microsystems and IBM, that it's another stab at a market customers largely rejected several years ago.
Some aspects are the same.
Hardware prices still rival those of low-end PCs. And the vendors still promise lower total cost of ownership along with simpler and more reliable network management. This one basically paints the screen and leaves virtually all the processing chores to the server. And Sun has better integrated its thin client into the existing infrastructure, a very sensible move. Network computing makes a great deal of sense.