Thought I would share this, although this might not be for everyone's liking.
I recently picked up a Surface RT for $170. I really like the tablet as a potential front-end interface. It has a kickstand, great screen, you can watch plex, Netflix, etc. It fits in really well just sitting on a countertop, dresser, etc. The big issue is HST is not supporting a Windows 8 app.
First, please vote if you would like a Windows 8 app - if anything HST should drop support for the CE HSTouch client and devote a little time to being on one more platform. This would benefit anyone who wants to launch HSTouch from Metro.
Second, my workaround...hack job. I use VMWare ESXi to host some virtual machines on a shared box. I setup a new HSTouch Win XP VM with a minimal amount of CPU, memory, disk space, etc. to host HSTouch. I think Remote Desktop from the Surface RT table to the Win XP VM to control the interface. It actually works fairly well, but certainly not perfect. Issues include:
Screen refreshs when you change HsTouch pages are slightly laggy/blend in over a second or so.
When you press the windows start button when connected to a RDP server, it opens the start menu on the RDP server rather than taking you back to Metro in the tablet client. You have to first go back to the Remote Desktop home page of the Metro app on the tablet.
To setup multiple instances of HSTouch properly you a separate VM for each client. Alternatively, you can hack XP to allow multiple concurrent RDP sessions but then you don't really get individual control of HsTouch. You may also be able to run multiple accounts on the VM with the RDP hack but I haven't tried this yet and if memory serves, multi-user on XP seems to start hogging resources.
Other than that, it looks fantastic and does not seem to use much resources.
Comments welcome.
I recently picked up a Surface RT for $170. I really like the tablet as a potential front-end interface. It has a kickstand, great screen, you can watch plex, Netflix, etc. It fits in really well just sitting on a countertop, dresser, etc. The big issue is HST is not supporting a Windows 8 app.
First, please vote if you would like a Windows 8 app - if anything HST should drop support for the CE HSTouch client and devote a little time to being on one more platform. This would benefit anyone who wants to launch HSTouch from Metro.
Second, my workaround...hack job. I use VMWare ESXi to host some virtual machines on a shared box. I setup a new HSTouch Win XP VM with a minimal amount of CPU, memory, disk space, etc. to host HSTouch. I think Remote Desktop from the Surface RT table to the Win XP VM to control the interface. It actually works fairly well, but certainly not perfect. Issues include:
Screen refreshs when you change HsTouch pages are slightly laggy/blend in over a second or so.
When you press the windows start button when connected to a RDP server, it opens the start menu on the RDP server rather than taking you back to Metro in the tablet client. You have to first go back to the Remote Desktop home page of the Metro app on the tablet.
To setup multiple instances of HSTouch properly you a separate VM for each client. Alternatively, you can hack XP to allow multiple concurrent RDP sessions but then you don't really get individual control of HsTouch. You may also be able to run multiple accounts on the VM with the RDP hack but I haven't tried this yet and if memory serves, multi-user on XP seems to start hogging resources.
Other than that, it looks fantastic and does not seem to use much resources.
Comments welcome.
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