I'll add more points to consider.

One of the obvious point is, you gain flexability in writing Windows
applications.
In web applications, you won't get results displayed unless the work process
is finished and return from server.(Though there are techniques to
workaround this) So the user will not have idea for what's going on in
transfer. For example, if the line drops suddenly during transfer the user
have to wait until timeout and get a somewhat blurred message of unable to
display a web page.

Another point is that the user will not get updated information unless the
page is refreshed. It's not uncommon that a salesperson will first check the
stock, then talk some time with the customer to persuade them to buy, and
finally have the product sold. For web application it's easy for the product
to be sold out when ordered if the stock is low and the business is large.
(Though there's still ways to get around this.)

A third point is for receipt/invoice printing(this point is much important
for POS system(I include the point here because I don't have the idea
whether your sales order system is like a POS one or not.) It's difficult
for a web application to control the precise printout, page break and page
cutting(for POS printer) while all of these can be done relatively easily on
standard windows application.

One point Cowboy have forgotten to mention is stability. In Win2k/XP it
doesn't easy for normal web application to crash a workstation, but a small
mistake in windows application causes freeze is quite common. Even if
exceptions occurs in web application it's very easy to centralise the
logfile for debug, while local application is more likely to be forced
shutdown by the system before errorlog is generated.

When a debugged version is release a web programmer only need to replace the
version on the web server while a standard application programmer should
tell their clients to download it themselves, and expecting continue to
receive the error report for next few days/months. This is considerable
difference in terms of system administration.

I'll consider the point made by Cowboy regarding connected application not
very important as with standard windows application, you still have the
choice of using a temporary database and update between time intervals.

To conclude, the choice of using both techniques have their Pros and Cons,
but the performance is more dependent on how you implement it. So it's just
as what Cowboy said at the beginning - both will do.

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