IDC this week released a report indicating that thin client shipments grew nearly 20 percent in the first quarter of this year. IDC’s report also stated that customers continued to favor the top suppliers: Wyse, Neoware and HP, with those three constituting nearly 76 percent of the market. As Dan Tynan pointed out in Think Thin, thin clients currently comprise less than 1 percent of today’s desktop machines, but IDC projects they could make up 10 percent by 2008. Tynan’s story was part of our online package Is the desktop PC history? It’s a bit early to draw a conclusion like that, but the package contains several stories about companies that are embracing the thin client approach, among both vendors and customers. Microsoft and Sun are also in the thin client fray. Team Redmond is working on a version of Windows XP, code-named Eiger, that it’s building specifically for thin clients, while Sun offers Sun Ray systems. And the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) is working on a way for open source users to tie thin clients to Linux servers. Technology Industry