SAN FRANCISCO  Instead of having a big, loud and complex computer on your desk, what if you could have a quiet, thin machine that rarely needed an upgrade or a fix?

That has been the goal of many technology companies over the last 15 or so years. They have tried to disrupt Microsoft’s dominance of the PC desktop by creating what amount to intelligent monitors.

Rather than relying on their innards for handling work, these so-called thin clients send it out over the network to much larger servers that hold all of the necessary software and handle data-processing jobs.

For a variety of reasons, including slow data connections and clunky software, this model failed to live up to its promise and turned into an industrywide joke. But now the technology is making a comeback, and large companies like Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Samsung are increasing their investments in thin client systems. Plenty of start-ups are looking at the market as well.