Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a major factor to consider when purchasing a large number of workstations. Thin Client Terminals have a much lower TCO than their PC (fat client) brothers.

The main reason for this is they do not need to be upgraded for a long time as they are only a basic connection device to the server and the speed that these terminal run is dependant on the speed of the server.

There is also no moving parts in a thin client so maintenance is basically no existent e.g. no hard drive to crash.

A typical Thin Client will out live a PC 5 to 1.