I'd love this, actually. My geek fantasy is to be able to run my gaming rig in a VM on a server with a high end GPU which is located in the basement. On my desk in the living room would be a silent, tiny thin client. Additionally, I would have a laptop thin client that I could take out onto the patio.

On a larger scale, think Steam but with the game running on a server in a datacenter somewhere which would eliminate the need for hardware on the user end.

No mention of Microsoft's RemoteFX coming in Windows 2008 R2 SP1? RemoteFX uses the server GPU for compression and to provide 3d capabilites to the desktop VMs.

Any company large enough for a datacenter is looking at VDI and RemoteFX is going to be supported by all of VDI providers except VMware. VDI, not relatively niche case massive calculations, will put GPUs in the datacenter.

I have VPN routers set up at each house that connect to mine. All machines are domain joined. I can use DameWare to remote control any machine. I use a centralized AV solution and WSUS to keep systems up to date. Essentially, I treat my family's PCs just like the PCs on my work network. I set them up so they stay automatically up to date and so that they are easy to remotely administer.

None of this is particularly expensive. VPN capable routers don't cost any more than normal routers... Netgear has one for $100. If you don't like the VPN router route, use OpenVPN and run it as a system service on each remote computer. WSUS is free. Centralized AV costs are little different than the equivalent number of single licenses. SBS Server is cheap, if you don't like the Technet permanent eval route.

All of this is done without paying for a Mac or teaching someone who doesn't care how to use Linux.

That's what electronic prescriptions are for.

There's no reason that a school can't run something like VDI or Citrix and provide access to those apps over the network.

A. So let the students connect to the array of servers through wireless.

B. Laptops aren't exactly expensive and student loans would cover. If a program isn't installable on a laptop, then see A. Citrix, VDI, Terminal Services, SSH, X, etc. are wonderful things.