Having lived thru the hell of trying to deliver web apps via a thin client model I personally prefer rendering on the client for anything that is not a static web page intended for content only (which now days is rarely the case). Thin clients where an anti-pattern championed by the big server vendors, due to the need for big servers. At the time they where justifying the architecture based on the fact that PC hardware was expensive and thin clients would reduce the need for high end PC's. They where trying to sell it before the web, the web just gave them the vehicle to really push it. Those realities are gone and, decent power in pc's is a commodity. If the web where invented today, it would have been a mesh given the current realities of the proliferation of computing power. Unfortunately it has the law of inertia on it's side.