Generally, terminals are low-powered, lack a hard disk and are quieter and more reliable than desktop computers because they do not have any moving parts.
The NX protocol can allow remote Windows and Linux sessions to be accessed from a web browser with very low bandwidth (40 kbit/s) requirements and tolerance for high-latency connections.
The fat client uses LDM to authenticate to the LTSP server and mounts user home directories using SSH and FUSE.
LTSP is unique in offering the ability for a computer to mount its root filesystem over a network and run applications locally.
On the Windows platform, the closest equivalent solution is to use a technology like Intel vPro to run a client-side hypervisor and mount the root filesystem image using iSCSI.