Optima ST320E Thinclients for $23.99

[robolo]

I got an email today from the store saying they had no more of the items and my order from early last week had been cancelled :-(

[sic0048]

I did receive my unit yesterday as expected. Hooked my regular monitor up with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Everything worked fine. You have to set up the RDP connection obviously, but it is easy to do, and you can have it automatically connect when you start the device if you want.

I did find that the shift key would not work on my wireless keyboard, so I switched to a wired keyboard and kept the wireless mouse.

I am not a network or systems expert, but just looking through the options, it does seem that there might be a way to load a driver into the system. My Advantech touchscreen also has a CE driver (although you have to request it), so hopefully we can actually find a way to load a driver on the device and use it for the touchscreens.

Performance isn't what I would call fast, but it is OK (my 2.16mhz dual core laptop connecting via RDP obviously works faster ). I doubt you could use popouts with it, but I haven't actually tried. I had no problems using the RDP connection and working on my CQC interfaces and checking them using the IV.

One nice thing about this unit is the fact that it is completely silent. It is weird to be working via this device and not have the normal computer fan noise.

[Bauer83]

I did receive my unit yesterday as expected. Hooked my regular monitor up with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Everything worked fine. You have to set up the RDP connection obviously, but it is easy to do, and you can have it automatically connect when you start the device if you want.

I did find that the shift key would not work on my wireless keyboard, so I switched to a wired keyboard and kept the wireless mouse.

I am not a network or systems expert, but just looking through the options, it does seem that there might be a way to load a driver into the system. My Advantech touchscreen also has a CE driver (although you have to request it), so hopefully we can actually find a way to load a driver on the device and use it for the touchscreens.

Performance isn't what I would call fast, but it is OK (my 2.16mhz dual core laptop connecting via RDP obviously works faster ). I doubt you could use popouts with it, but I haven't actually tried. I had no problems using the RDP connection and working on my CQC interfaces and checking them using the IV.

One nice thing about this unit is the fact that it is completely silent. It is weird to be working via this device and not have the normal computer fan noise.

So do you need to setup a RDP connection in order for it to run? Nice to hear it runs silent. I assume you are testing it with a hardwired connection?

[sic0048]

Yes - hardwired, although since I was able to use a wireless keyboard and mouse, it must have generic USB drivers loaded, so I suspect you could hook up a USB wireless adapter and have it work.

It has an internet browser that will work out of the box, but pretty much anything else is going to require a RDP or citrix server connection. I don't know squat about a citrix server, so RDP was the obvious choice.

As a thin client, this really isn't a useable computer, it is more of an access point to allow you remote access to a useable computer. It does however allow you to hook up external devices to the thin client, so it is more than just a remote screen.

For example, you can hook up a printer and have local printing on this device. In fact it trys to walk you through the process of finding the printer and driver during the set up process. I simply exited out of it since I do not want to hook a printer up to the thin client, but this as well as some other tabs on the set up screen make me believe we can somehow get drivers loaded into the memory of the device and end up using it for a touchscreen device.