Rob's Tech Fun and Games

With the announced release of the iPad, and everyone rushing to say whether or not the product will work for them (even though they generally haven’t tried it), I thought it would be worth taking a step back, and looking at what I’d actually really like from tablet technology in terms of working professionally.  Lets face it, the iPad is designed for home users first and foremost, as a convenient mechanism for consuming content.  That might be good or bad, depending on what you were hoping for … but what should we be hoping for?

Well, for one thing, I don’t want to replace my laptop.  I’m not looking for something to do everything my computer currently does.  Much like Apple targeted the home user, I want a device that will let me work closely with my office computer to consume corporate content, no (in general) for producing content.

Wouldn’t it be brilliant to have a tablet on the desktop, paired with your computer?  If you want to read a document, just select a “send to tablet” option, and read it in comfort, rather than struggling with a fixed screen, or printing hundreds of pages.  Wouldn’t it be great to make basic corrections, and then send it back to the PC for any in depth formatting or major revisions?  I don’t think I want to write many, if any, serious documents from scratch on a tablet … its easier to type a large amount of text onto a fixed computer, with a large screen.  I might scribble basic notes in a meeting, so decent handwriting recongition might be nice, but thats still a way off, I feel.

With the larger screen, and touchscreen, wouldn’t it be great as a input device?  Have it hooked up to the PC, and you’ve potentially got a decent graphics tablet for marketing teams or more complex document editing, in conjunction with the main monitors and keyboards.

One complaint I keep reading about the iPad is the lack of multi-tasking.  Like the iPhone, it only runs a single application at a time.  You don’t have twitter running in the background, with an IM session running with potential popups jumping on the screen, and links between applications, like integration between email and a custom DMS, or a word processor and a DMS.  To be honest, the way I see a tablet device functioning most effectively in the office isn’t to do that – thats the PC or laptop’s job.  If I pick up my tablet to review a document, or view a podcast, I don’t want to be interrupted.  I don’t want the constant alerts, or skype calls, or email and IM notifications.  My main computer has all of that.

If I’m travelling, and just bringing a tablet device with me, its a different equation.  I’ve two conflicting needs at that point – I need the device to be damn reliable!  I need it to work if I’m around the world in Tokyo without IT support to hand.  I also need to be able to do everything I can do in the office – write full documents, record digital dictations, file my documents and emails into the document management system.  I see the way round these conflicting needs being a simple, dedicated platform for basic corporate tasks like email, combined with a virtual desktop client, allowing me the full resources of an office PC without needing the complexity on my tablet.  If I have issues with applications crashing, and I can’t get hold of IT, I can still handle basic tasks like email reliably – I’m never totally of touch, and unable to work.

Nothing can handle all that at the moment.  Windows Tablet PCs are hugely over complex, trying to be a full desktop replacement.  Its not needed, and leaves you with a heavy, expensive device that doesn’t get used.  The Apple iPad (I say, speculatively) seems too consumer based and PC independent – its great for reading a magazine at home, but I can’t send a word document to it for annotation easily, and I can’t use it for more monitor space or as a graphics tablet.

What we need is something in the middle, designed as a peripheral on the desktop, rather than a desktop replacement.  Something I can use on the go, with enough connectivity to let me hook into virtual services in the office easily and reliably.  Something without hundreds of irritating consumer applications to distract staff, or at least something locked down at a corporate level.  At the moment, no one wants to fill that gap, and I think its where we need to go to start actually reducing paper consumption.

Just my thought for the day!

Recently, I’ve been playing with Linux, specifically Ubuntu, in an attempt to set up a simple, maintainable client for virtual desktops.  Its been a fair while since I’ve used linux in a serious sense, so I thought I’d post up what I’ve done, as I progress (largely for my own reference, but hopefully others might find it of use!)

Key requirements are:

A virtual client!  In this instance, the vmware open client will need to be installed and configured on the desktop.  There are still limitations with the open client that may break the plan – limitations with remote media playback, and usb redirection are two areas in particular that may cause issues.

A working web browser!  Of course, Firefox is an obvious standard, installed with Ubuntu, so thats not much of a challenge, at least on the surface.  Beyond a working web browser, we need to possibly extend our server architecture to support browsers beyond Internet Explorer for our key wep applications, allowing a level of work to be carried out in the event of virtual desktop failures.  This is where things get a lot harder!

A standard environment across different hardware, locked down for the default user.   This is actually quite tricky.  By default, linux is designed to be easy to customise and configure, so locking it down to a single user, while allowing network proxy changes and wireless connections, is actually quite a challenge.  In addition, desktop launchers will need to be variable, depending on local printer installations for users on laptops with home printer (vmware-view allows you to redirect a printer, but you need to specifically do it by name).

An architecture to allow remote reconfiguration, support and updates across a company wide platform.  This is one of the worst areas – linux still lags quite badly behind the sort of architecture taken for granted on a Windows network when it comes to administration through global policies.  It’s still fundamentally a server operating system,and admin tools generally focus on supporting machines runnign in that capacity, not as clients.  This is the hardest area of all, looking forward to a possible roll out of well over a thousand machines world wide, with a technical team with no linux experience!  Keeping the client simple and cheap, allowing machines to be swapped instead of supported is a very high priority where possible.

Hopefully the next series of posts on this topic will be useful, although its quite a change of tack from SharePoint!  Don’t worry, as new SharePoint issues come up, I’ll still be posting on that topic too.