A system and method is provided for designing (or re-architecting) a personal digital assistant (PDA) as a portable thin client of a network. The portable thin client is a small, stateless, "plug and work" computer whose main function is to process all input and output for the user, as well as to manage communication with at least one server. All other computational tasks (or services) for the user of the PDA are performed on the server which is shared amongst a community of thin clients. As a result of re-architecting the PDA as a portable thin client, there is no need to download application(s) and operating system(s) running the application(s) to the PDA because the server--through the network--provides these services. In addition, no data is lost when a PDA is faulty or has to be changed. Moreover, in one embodiment, the portable thin client (or thin client PDA) includes smart card capabilities so that an enterprise (or business organization) can pool its PDAs with the users of the PDA on a need-to-use basis.