Is that your television? Or a zero client running a virtual desktop?

Teradici's launched a new range of zero clients powered by silicon it did not design, a departure from its usual practice the company hopes will spread its PCoIP protocol far and wide. Teradici's meat and potatoes is virtual workspaces delivered as nothing but pixels: all the compute happens in the server and zero clients do …

[John Smith 19]

So I guess the NHS will be able to run XP indefinitely.

Yey.

[Richard 12]

Remote desktop over wifi?

Double You Tee Eff.

Onve there's more than a couple of these within half a mile the latency of simply moving the mouse is going to suck donkey testicles, let alone trying to do actual work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Remote desktop over wifi?

Very true.

Doesn't stop the org I work for from deploying wireless networking to replace 1G wired - after all, if there is performance problem, you can just add more access points, right? Does physics mind? Nah mate, this is cutting edge wireless. Doh.

Waiting for a mouse-over event to occur for a few seconds after you have in fact moused-over really is the highlight of any day in the office.

[John Mangan]

What's the USP of PCoIP . . .

compared to VNC, RDP, X over IP, etc?

[Buzzword]

Mobile latency

> virtual workspaces delivered as nothing but pixels

Yep, perfectly fine if you have a low-latency, high-bandwidth, fixed connection.

> There's also the prospect of automotive and mobile applications.

WTF are they smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software (Blast)

Is going to kill PCoIP. Nearly every device built today has H.264 hardware decoding. VMware is taking advantage of that. Custom PCoIP hardware simply can't keep up with VMware's ever-expanding software-only client functionality - things like RTAV, scanner redirection, etc.

Needs change. If you get locked into a desktop hardware solution that can't get upgraded without a full rip and replace you'll regret it. I know we have. (Current Teradici zero client users.)

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Re: Software (Blast)

Nearly every device built today has H.264 hardware decoding

So ... the smart money would be on delivering the remote desktop as an H.264 stream.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Software (Blast)

"So ... the smart money would be on delivering the remote desktop as an H.264 stream."

Right. Exactly what Blast does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Software (Blast)

Is H.264 really a viable mechanism for transmitting a desktop image? We're not talking video here, where a slight blurring of Sean Connery's hair is not a problem, but lossless, pixel perfect, transmission of a desktop with very low latency where blurring (transient or otherwise) of the image may cause problems. I frequently work remotely with fonts such as 6x13 (the classic xterm font), and scrolling fast I don't want to see any blur. Sure, if you are a web dev or project manager and work with Comic Sans all day everyday, it may suit; but for anyone else? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Software (Blast)

Have you measured the CPU load that Blast requires on your servers? You may have to rip and replace your servers to add GPUs. Ironically, your existing zero client would support RT-AV if VMware would support the H.264 encoders that are built-in to almost all HD Webcams. Instead, they chose to compress the webcams in software.