You guys are kind of missing the point. There are all kinds of thin client solutions we could come up with, but telling him to buy cheap old CPUs as the client defeats the purpose. He wants to cut down on workstations. (please note that I will telling him buy cheap old CPUs as a solution
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Mike, you could have a single server running either linux or windows, and then buy client hardware for each station on our display. The client hardware would consist of the terminal client device, a screen, and a mouse and keyboard. You can find terminal devices that are basically a screen with a mouse and key board hanging off.
Some examples can be found here:
http://www.espritsys.com/productthin.html
My advice? Scrap it. Go out and get some second hand compact dell CPUs off E-bay and just have full workstations. The time, energy and more importantly cost are just not worth it. You can find some very compact CPUs these days. Unless there was some kind of avant guard design that ruled out a PC, go the simple route.
If you DO decide to you want a Windows terminal services setup, PM me, I can walk you through the entire setup. Its not difficult.