This week I have had a Wyse P20 zero client as my primary device for a few days. This terminal uses hardware PCoIP from Teradici to connect to the software PCoIP component in the View Agent.
The back end was the same View 4.5 Beta, Windows 7 VM that I used from my laptop a couple of weeks ago. The terminal came with a slightly old firmware, I was able to update to latest firmware using a management virtual appliance however the firmware is not a View 4.5 specific firmware. Again I had two different monitors running at different resolutions and it was my main computing device. As with my full client test I was able to do what I do in my office and I forgot I was using a thin client.
I even taught a two day online course using WebEx. This was a big call for me because if anything went wrong I would have ten students unhappy. It was no problem and the students didn’t know.
I did have a couple of setup hiccups. One is that the terminal is very picky about it’s network connection, it only accepted a direct cable connection to my Allied Telesyn switch, it didn’t like my in wall cabling nor did it like my D-Link desktop switch. The other issue was that under a PCoIP connection the mouse needs to be directly connected to the terminal, not via a hub, or the mouse cursor disappears. The mouse still works but without a pointer it’s hard to know where you’re clicking.
Some things still didn’t work, the USB DVD writer still couldn’t write however I did find out how to get Windows Device Centre to install on the Windows 7 VM so it recognised my WinMo phone.
Overall the P20 is a great terminal, with dual DVI ports it’s a powerful terminal that’s easy to use. When View 4.5 is released and Teradici and Wyse have optimised the terminal firmware for the changed PCoIP protocol it should be even better.
© 2010, Alastair. All rights reserved.
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