Archive for December 12th, 2012

Migrated: HP Elitebook 8760w with IGEL Universal Desktop OS Version 4.10.100

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Hello,

today we migrated a HP Elitebook 8760w with the IGEL Universal Desktop OS 4.10.100/4.11.100 (issue see below) and the result is ok.

WiFi: Working
Ethernet: Working
Audio: Working incl. HDMI Output
GFX Card (AMD FirePro M5950): VESA mode only, no native driver support (Single Screen / VESA max. Resolution 1920×1080 tested and working)
USB Ports: USB 3.0 (the two ports in front of the left side) not working, 3x USB 2.0 Ports working fine
Touchpad: IM PS/2 Synaptics Touchpad is working with 4.10.100 but not with 4.11.100
Webcam: Not available for this device, external WebCam is working fine if connected thru one of the working USB 2.0 ports for ICA Sessions with XenApp 6.5
Multimedia results: Very good with HDX Flashredirection (HD Quality) and also multimedia redirection.

In general the result is good, iam not happy with the VESA mode but the Laptop comes with an Intel i5 CPU and can easily compensate this for multimedia output. The max. resolution of 1920×1080 is working so we have no problem with the missing native GFX driver support. USB 3.0 support would be fine but i think this is only a question of time.. 🙂 The touchpad issue with the 4.11.100 is a pain but i hope IGEL will include missing drivers here in the future, so we have to use the working 4.10.100 until this is fixed; it’s ok for the user so it’s also ok for me at the moment. 🙂

So if you are looking for a Laptop based Thin Client (…or call it Mobile Thin Client/Mobile Cloud Client)… it might be a deal.

Cheers
Michael

P.S.: This is without any guarantee, you have to test this by your own too!

Posted in UDC migrated 3rd Party Hardware | No Comments »

Difference between System on Chip (SoC/ARM) and regular Thin Clients (x86/x64)

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Hi,

since IGEL start selling the UD2 Multimedia, which is a SoC/ARM device, a lot of people start testing the device and sometimes a few questions came up. I will try to answer it in a fast way…

Q: Why is a ARM/Sytem on Chip (SoC) device cheaper then a “normal” Client?

A: The ARM Technology in general is cheaper then regular PC Technology but it’s not so powerfull. As sample, the NVidia Tegra 3 (Quad Core) ARM CPU (ARM High End) can be mostly compared with an INTEL Core 2 Duo or Atom CPU(x86 Low End). This is not bad but it’s not an Intel I7 Quad Core CPU at all, pointing to core’s and MHz is a fault for comparing ARM and x86/x64 in general.

Q: Why do a SoC/ARM based client provide fast/high Multimedia performance?

A: A lot of SoC/ARM devices are using a multimedia accelerator (DSP) and only applications which are able to use this accelerator provide a real good multimedia performance. This performance will be not provided in general! If an application has no idea how to deal with it, it will be much slower then on a regular Thin Client and the device needs to have an accelerator… Your ARM based Android Tablet do not have a chip like this, iam talking only about SoC Thin Clients here. 🙂

Q: Which Software clients/sessions are using this multimedia accelerator?

A: Only for IGEL UD2 MM (Firmware 1.03.100) it´s the Citrix Receiver, the RDP Client and the Media Player; other devices can provide different results. Update: For Flash content in Citrix sessions, Flash redirection do not work currently… No flash player for ARM, so flash based content in ICA will look very good for the user but the content is always rendered on the server side; this is important for bigger installations because this can increase the server requirements to an high level. This is a general issue for all ARM/SuC devices and i can not guarentee that this will change in the future. So server administrators should be aware and installations with an high demand for Flash content should check this out first.

Q: Is the 3rd party hardware support for an ARM/SoC device the same then with an regular x86 based client?

A: No, a lot of drivers are not available for ARM/SoC so you have to test it. For IGEL the USB2Serial Adapter works as example but WebCams or other devices that works on x86 based systems might not work together with the UD2 Multimedia. Same for other vendors… Test! Test! Test!

Q: Why are some sessions not available on an ARM/SoC device?

A: You can compare it to the Microsoft Surface (ARM-Windows 8 RT) and Surface Pro (x86-Windows 8 Pro) tablet or the hardware support question, it’s an other architecture and applications, drivers and operating systems must be designed for it. If not it will not work… Quite simple.

I hope this will solve some questions coming up…

Cheers

Michael

Posted in Citrix, General, Microsoft, Solutions | No Comments »