Re: What is "the Windows client"?'Forget it' is correct...
Joke Alert= IBM stuff came with 'Forms' that folks 'data-filled' the open boxes... folks maintaining IBM stuff had a way to modify those forms w/ boxes (some called the boxes windows)... MS was at DOS 2.5 ?? (the one B/4 DOS 3.0) running mostly on clerks desktop machines and the UNIX folks were quietly laughing...
Some of us UNIX folks tried helping the IBM folks move around and modify the boxes and we quickly found the whole thing was tied to a proprietary IBM combination of spreadsheet and database written to by a left handed typing program, or, = 'this is stupid, i'll pass'... back to my UNIX.
MS had some very smart folks that looked at the IBM forms stuff and rightfully concluded that if they did it right, they could make desktop DOS into a universally simple forms / Windows screen that wouldnt scare any office worker just trying to use a computer as the boss hates paperwork... soon hand written forms morfed into a copy machine making 2 extra copies of the computed, printed out slowly, document...soon the output of entire paper mills was for copy paper for a growing number of in-house filing cabinets...
Joke Alert= Governments worldwide discovered they could just seize the files and fishing expedition / troll the data for possible criminal behavior... MS client-server stuff ended this with central data storage... desktops got new windows systems as the older systems kit filled up w/ no data retention wanted locally by company folks burnt by too much bad stuff found in local filing cabinets...Big Iron, Big Data, the Cloud all make sure no local filing cabinets ever start to fill up, ever again, done.
IMHO= MS had 16-bit Zenix (UNIX clone), and a really well made NT Kernals from 3.1 to 5.2... then Kernal 6.0 (Vista, failed to be loved by anyone) and later went in too many directions to be usefull to anyone... MS is still in this failure mode and the company directors are simply too close to the problem to see the results of their honest effort as worthless for any ongoing use...REF= WIKI, Comparison of Microsoft Windows versons.
caveiat= this will be my last MS-WIN comment as i've finally acheived my Y2K goal of Running no MS stuff, in any form on anything i have, using only UNIX / C stuff..LINUX... i really tried NT kernel stuff, MS didn't support their own kernel...Absolutely World Class Failure...RS.