HP Monday plans to start shipping blade PCs equipped with a version of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon processor developed for the new systems. The devices replace a line of desktop blades based on Transmeta Corp.'s Efficeon processor. HP put sales of those models on hold in January, when Transmeta said it would stop making Efficeon.

Sun, which offers the Sun Ray line of thin clients, last week announced a deal under which thin-client market leader Wyse Technology Inc. will bundle its devices with software that Sun acquired when it bought Tarantella Inc. in July.

The software, called Secure Global Desktop, lets thin clients access applications on a variety of systems, including ones running Windows, Linux or Unix.

The business arguments for moving to either server-based thin clients or blade PCs in data centers are similar. Both technologies promise IT cost reductions through more centralized systems management and reduced desktop support needs. But that's where agreement ends among users and among vendors.

Michael Sexton, director of IT at Princeton Resorts Group LLC in Phoenix, is supporting about 200 of his end users with Wyse thin clients attached to servers that run the company's Windows and terminal server applications. Blade PCs aren't attractive to him because they're more complicated to support than the Wyse devices are, he said.