Remote Desktop or New Laptop

My company is looking at getting me a laptop to run Pro/E. I had a nice Dell M90 speced out, then the IT girl mentioned "Remote Desktop".

My question is how well does "Remote Desktop" work? We have a T1 line here at work, but I only have a 1.5 DSL line at home (256 up), how well would it work at home? The remote view server will be a 2.0 ghz 1g ram Dell Precision 450, and the client will probably be a cheap laptop.

Thanks,
Robert


Edited by: robertr

Depends on how much work you will be doing from home. Remote Desktop is very slow from home for me. We use PDMLink and drop down menus take forever to appear. You will be much happier with a VPN connection.

Robertr,


If you can get a Dell M90 and you can log into your company's network from home (VPN), why don't you have IT load Pro/E locally on this laptop and take it home with you. You'll then be able to see the Pro/E license file on your server and run Pro/E just like you're at work. Even better yet, WF3 lets you "borrow" a license of Pro/E so you don't even need a network connection back to your comapny's server. If you need to use Mechanica, you won't be able to yet, but most "core" Pro/E functionality will come along with the "borrow" option.


If you end up getting a desktop, I use "Remote Desktop" very often and it works rather wellfor me at home. I happen to use it over a wireless connection ("b", so it's the slowest) and connect into work through our company's VPN. There is one thing you should make sure to set before expecting decent performance. You need to make sure you set the "graphics" config option in Pro/E to "win32_gdi" before you exit Pro/E to go home. If you set it after you launch Pro/E from home, you'll need to exit and re-launch Pro/E for it to take effect - try it both ways to see the change. This setting will not be as demanding over the Internet. Second, try setting your graphics card color qulity to 16 bit, again to reduce graphics demand. This should allow you to actually rotate your model without exessive "delay". It is plenty good enough to do work.


Regards,


Kaz Z06

Also install Intralink locally if you are using that.


I've used remote desktop from inside my company from a dell M60 to a dell 670 great preformance.You will be limited by the dsl, vpn connection speed.


Most companies really limit the amount a traffic through the firewall.

We are a small company and only have one license, so that won't be a problem.

The reasoning behind using remote desktop is cost savings from our IT girl. I would use a standard laptop accessing Pro/E by remote desktop on th the existing Pro/E workstation, not sure how a laptop like that would handle the graphics.

We would also like to take the laptop into our customers to give presentations I would really hate to make 16 bit graphics presentation to a potential customer and have to worry if I can access our network from their location. Because of that I would rather get the M90 with the Pro/E license on it, just wanted to see what you guys think.

Thanks,
Robert

Replace the desktop unit with a M90 with a docking station, keyboeard and large monitor. Have Pro/E with large screen at work, take the laptop home or to a customer.

I have tried several different remote desktop software and found that if you expect any performance like Kaz said is you need to turn the video to the windows driver and hope for a decent connection. In the end we found that the best one was the Windows built in Remote Desktop. Some of the others the Graphics would not update. It is not like running pro from your laptop directly.
With that said if you expect to work on any assemblies that are of any respectable size forget about it.