A company in Redwood City, California, has discovered a way that will allow one desktop personal computer to run as many as seven workstations by sharing a single processor. Each of the workstations would have its own keyboard, monitor, and mouse. The Xtenda card from NComputing transforms a desktop PC into the equivalent of a mainframe computer and allows seven people at seven different desks to use one PC as if each user had his or her own processor. The chief executive officer of NComputing, Stephen Dukker, has compared Xtenda technology to the idea of time-share computing that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. This involved using one powerful and central computer to drive 'thin clients.' The term 'thin client' is used in the industry to denote keyboards and monitors that do not have their own microprocessor. Modern PCs have the processing power of mainframes, Dukker says, but most of the time, their power is wasted. Dukker was a co-founder of eMachines, a company that drove PC prices under $1000 in the 1990s. Dukker says that his company has worked to develop PC-sharing hardware and software for about 12 years in Germany, Russia, and Poland. In the last 18 months, the firm has sold about 200,000 PC-sharing devices to schools. Most of these schools are located overseas, he says. Now Dukker wants to promote PC-sharing as a cost-saving method to schools and small businesses in the United States.