Thin clients/embedded XP

jaydeeuk1

Have been looking at itx/pico itx systems, busted eee PC netbooks for £40 or less all in and with little success so far. Basically, I want to setup a PC I can remote in to on a different network. Won't go in to why, but as long as I can use logmein (yes I realise the irony logging in to a thin client), access to a browser with flash, I'm not too fussed. Not bothered about speed, hard drive size, just as long as its low powered and silent.

I've spotted on of these on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HP-T5700-THIN-CLIENT-PSU-1GHz-XP-EMBEDDED-/190482535243?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item2c59a4d34b

£39.99 inc delivery

1ghz transmeta cpu, 256mb ram, embedded xp, low power usage (will be on 24/7) and a nice little package. Now I know logmein will work fine on embedded xp, and I presume it comes with IE. Could someone confirm if this is true, or if not a better (cheaper) solution! Would I run in to any problems?

Cheers

alexmole

Embeded XPe normally has Citrix support, RDP support, Internet Explorer, Calculator and not much else

jaydeeuk1

Thats fine for me then.

jaydeeuk1

Just an update, it arrived and its a fantastic bit of kit for £40! Smaller than I thought it would be, immaculate condition, about the size of a nintendo wii. Is completely silent and barely gets warm after being on all day. Wanted to buy a few more but they all sold with a few hours after I posted - not surprising given their true value is probably nearer £100.

I am finding the lack of ram to bit of a pitfall. Installing logmein is becoming an issue, flash player out of the question at moment, keep running out of memory - I installed tightvnc as test but I believe I would have to amend firewall rules/port forwarding on the router which isn't an option for what I'm planning. Also, despite commiting changes, the VNC service doesn't appear to run automatically at logon, not sure why yet.

Am I right in thinking that it that this takes standard DDR ram? Also, anyone know of a program like logmein, thats pref. free, has a smaller footprint (less than 50mb installed) and doesn't require any router settings changed?

closed

teamviewer

spakkker

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11643_div/11643_div.HTML -ddr ram.

I put a lappy hdd onto a 300ghz thin client runs xp ,no vid, can't get audio sorted !!
Try googling your thin client model + hack.

jaydeeuk1

Bumping an old thread. Had good fun with these, amazing what they're capable of!
Got a problem, and I'm at a loss what could be the cause.


Got a few of these now, and am seeing what they're like at dvd / divx playback.

PC 1 - 1000mhz crusoe cpu, 8mb ATI Rage XL, 256mb ram, 256mb flash

PC 2 and 3 - 800mhz crusoe cpu, 16mb ATI radeon 7000, 256mb ram, 256mb flash


Testing divx playback, on PC 1 it plays back flawlessly. Wasn't expecting this as the gpu has pretty much zero video acceleration features, and all work done by the cpu.

On PC 2 and 3, which supposedly has the better gpu with video acceleration features, it stutters, perhaps 2-3 fps.

I'm using VLC player, loaded on a flash drive which I'm plugging in to all 3 pcs, version 0.9 something, as v1.00 or above won't extract as it uses too much memory footprint when extracting.
I've tried mplayer, but that crashes out on all pcs.

The only other diff is pc 2 and 3 have directx 9 installed, and no directx is installed on pc 1. However, I did try pc 3 before installing dx9 and it was jerky, and if anything I'd have thought dx would aid playback.

Any ideas? Is there any software that can list what video acceleration features a gpu has, and if they're enabled?
I'm pretty certain the stuttering isn't due to the difference in CPU speed, its like PC is accelerating the video by hardware, and in 2/3.

DVD playback is also jerky (and the radeon deffo has mpeg-2 acceleration, but doesn't appear to be used)

Anyone have a solution? Ta.

pedrothefish

try kmplayer not sure what the footprint is though.
i played stuff that was jerky with vlc but kmplayer sorted it.