In an ideal world, it would be easy to deploy and manage the robust client/server applications that tap today’s abundant PC power. But if you support a distributed computing environment built around the Wintel computing architecture, you know better. To a large extent, the culprit is a Microsoft OS deign that’s not quite at home in the enterprise. While hundreds of add-on products promise to reduce cost of ownership though centralized desktop management, few deliver benefits that justify their costs. Most managers simply resign to the fact that supporting large numbers of PC workstations will be incredibly expensive and inefficient, and chalk it up to a cost doing business. So which is better