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ProPalms TSE Anyone?
burt-not-ernie asks: "Our company is beginning to rely heavily on Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services. We started with just a few outside salespeople and then added the folks in our remote offices. Everyone is loving it. Now, we want to add an additional server, publish applications, and do load balancing. It's time to find a third-party product to enhance Terminal Services, and I just about fell over when I was given a vendor's quote to install Citrix. I used Citrix at my previous place of employment, but we had been using it since the days of OS/2, so the upgrade costs were not so bad. Purchasing Citrix is just too expensive for us. I have seen a demo of ProPalms TSE and like what I see. The pricing is also very attractive. Has anyone out there had any experience — good or bad — with ProPalms TSE, especially the latest version, 5.0?"
What exactly is Windows Terminal Server? Is it something like X? I suppose it adds isolation so vendors can't cause problems, but why wouldn't you give them a CGI web interface while letting employees tunnel in instead? If it's a text-based service instead of GUI, is there any particular reason not to do it using telnet and a Linux box?
Many of the features found in the base Presentation Server package are coming to Longhorn Server. For a quick overview of the changes to Terminal Services under Longhorn see Brian Madden's page. It's generally geared towards Citrix but there is more general TS knowledge there than just about any other place on the web not least of which is Brian himself.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Anyones palm could turn pro, there's enough source material around to help.
Task Mangler
(Almost on-topic)
I have a Qtek 9100 with a built-in Terminal Services Client, which is all well and good - except I don't know how to set up XP to act as a Terminal Services server (I know, they call it something else now). I haven't been able to find any good guides, I have been able to find a bunch of obvious plug guides that had less actual content than marketing content. Anyone able to help?
How much were they quoting you for exactly what, and including other services or not? Inquiring minds want to know what expensive means. Might help frame the discussion.
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Yes, I've used ProPalm's (formerly Tarantella's, formerly NewMoon's) product for over three years now. It works as well as we need it to but it's not flawless. The features we use heavily are the load balancing, applicatin web portal (analagous to program neighborhood in citrix) and the ability to publish apps based on our AD structure. For 200 users we have 8 load balanced servers, none of them powerhouses, really.
Our biggest issues have been with printing support. However, this is not limited to ProPalms, it will be your biggest issue with any Terminal Services application that relies on the client printer configuration. We are in the process of switching over to pure server based printing to bypass the client printer sharing "feature". We have a stupid high density of printers in our organization though, with over 40 printers supporting 200 staff.
In my opinion it is a legitimate competitor to Citrix and obviously comes with a significant price advantage. Feel free to email me.
Novell zenwork. i'm not quite sure about the price but a middle tier server could probably respond to your need. And it's compatible with windows server and windows terminal server.
Never used this but I have used some of there other products which seem pretty good. http://www.2x.com/applicationserver/citrix.htm/ Price seem pretty good too.
Yeah right, Like Im gonna write a sig.
2x (http://www.2x.com/) has several TS enhancing programs for load balancing, app publishing etc., as well as a good program for managing thin clients in a corporate environment, including linux based thin clients for those who want/need to use really inexpensive (i.e. old computers) as thin client terminals. I'll also second the thought of waiting for Longhorn, as the enhancements look might tasty and possibly enough to get by without any additions. Unfortunately the Longhorn enhancements don't seem to do a whole lot for the video performance - Citrix is still the only game in town if you want to use any sort of multi-media in a TSE environment.