Firstly, thin client. The T5720 does have support for TS Gateway but in actuality is unable to run it, when flashed with the latest available XP Embedded image from HP. I am not going to delve too much into this but suffice it to say that with thin clients you are tied to the vendor for operating system support and if they can’t be bothered to support a particular functionality you are pretty well stuck. As I have not been able to get TSG functioning on the T5720 at the present, with our WS2008R2 RD Gateway server, I will just do some more testing to see if there is a compatibility problem with R2 by setting up a 2008 TS gateway inside our network. If this doesn’t work this is just another thin client I can use for something, albeit a more expensive one (the total amount I have spent on it to date is about comparable for T5720s in general secondhand, considering the extraordinarily low price I paid for the base unit in the first place). Whilst thin clients can generally run local apps quite well, the lack of space on the flash card (512 MB in this one) is a significant consideration with less than 100 MB free at the moment.
The home computer is progressing with the arrival and installation of the motherboard. In a day or two I will order the CPU and RAM.
The laptop image for Windows 7 Enterprise is still in progress as I need to get the software from HP. Whilst Toshiba are easy to get stuff for from the Laptop Company which is a domestic retail outlet, the HP agents Axon are a different kettle of fish to deal with altogether, being more geared towards the enterprise market. It has been previously quite convoluted with a big run around to find out how to contact the right person in Axon to get the software and at the moment what has been supplied is incomplete.
Tela have announced that in a couple of months they are switching over to Windows 7 on their laptops. Obviously we are still waiting to see the details. If what is shipped is x86 only then it will still be unsatisfactory as all new laptops with the amount of memory that is now being supplied should be shipping with x64. As such I expect to have to continue new laptop imaging until such time as x64 becomes supported on the standard desktops.