The thin client model saves ~34.6% over three years, primarily through hardware longevity and reduced support labor. The breakeven point occurs at month 14. 6. Performance Case Study Scenario: Engineering firm running AutoCAD LT 2025 and Microsoft Teams. Hardware: Dell Wyse 5070 (Intel Gemini Lake, 8GB RAM) vs. Dell OptiPlex (Core i5, 16GB RAM). Connection: 1 Gbps LAN, 20 ms latency.
| Metric | Fat Client (Local) | Thin Client (RDP 10) | User Perception | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | AutoCAD pan/zoom | 60 fps | 58 fps (GPU decode) | Identical | | Teams video call | 720p @ 30 fps | 720p @ 30 fps (RDP Multimedia Redirection) | Identical | | USB printer redirection | Native | 200 ms latency | Noticeable but functional | | Boot to login | 45 seconds | 12 seconds (PXE boot) | Faster on thin |
is a critical Windows IoT feature. UWF intercepts all write operations to the protected volume (e.g., C:) and redirects them to a RAM overlay. Upon reboot, the overlay is discarded. Consequently, even if a user downloads ransomware, the malware disappears at logoff. 5. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model We constructed a three-year TCO model for a mid-sized enterprise (500 users) comparing a standard Windows 11 Pro PC ($1,200 hardware + $200 Windows license) versus a Windows IoT thin client ($400 hardware + $50 license). The host server infrastructure (Windows Server 2022 Datacenter with RDS CALs) is held constant.