[General Topics] Menneisyys:
1.2 Non-Web-based applications

There are several applications that, unlike the previously reviewed ones, don’t use a central Web server for keeping track of a computer and client log-ins.

Some of them are based on the RDP (Remote Desktop) protocol (used by Terminal Server / Services in the Terminal Services / Server line of Microsoft Windows and Remote Desktop by Windows XP Pro / Vista); some of them (VNC clients) on Remote FrameBuffer (RFB) and some use a proprietary one. In the following, I devote three subsections to these three cases. There are major differences between these three cases, which is worth elaborating on because they have a direct, at times, unwanted effect (for example, RDP-based remote controlling locks the current user out of the desktop and sets the desktop size to, as far as Pocket PC clients are concerned, either VGA (640*480) or SVGA (800*600) resolution) on the behavior of all the applications based on these protocols.

First, how these protocols compare? I’ve constantly been asked on these; therefore, I elaborate on this question a bit more.

First, the RDP protocol differs a LOT from all the other protocols and has a lot of restrictions. While it’s already installed and available on Windows XP Pro (and enabling it is just some clicks as is explained here), it has some restrictions none of the other solutions have:

When a remote session is active, the remote terminal can’t be used by anyone – they will be locked out

As far as Pocket PC clients are concerned, the desktops will be resized to either VGA (640*480) or SVGA (800*600) size. This (particularly the former) may be just too small for some kind of applications you’d like to run. Furthermore, you can’t extend your desktop to your external monitors (which is supported by many other remote controller solutions) either. This may also be a problem in some cases.

With Pocket PC clients, it doesn’t even let for starting applications that require any kind of sound output. This, in cases, may also result in problems (for example, when you want to start a remote playback of a sound clip or recording some kind of sound input.)

They don’t let for remote desktop shutdown / restart, which may be a pain in the back too.

While RDP has its drawbacks, it has advantages too; in addition to the above-mentioned availability in many Windows operating systems (without your having to install any server component – you only need to enable them with a single checkbox tick), the really good bandwidth usage (the current, version 5 of RDP is very well though-out, which is not necessarily the case with alternative protocols). Therefore, you may really want to compare its disadvantages and advantages to those of the alternates - in a lot of cases, RDP may be the best solution.

Second, the second most important protocol is RFB, which forms the foundation for VNC (Virtual Network Computing) clients. When properly configured, with the proper clients, VNC (from now on, I use “VNC” to refer to remote controller products using the RFB protocol) can be even more bandwidth-friendly than the above-introduced Microsoft RDP protocol. VNC clients don’t suffer from the above-listed problems of RDP either and, therefore, may be a much better choice than the built-in RDP under some circumstances (for example, when you don't want to lock out the current user while you remote control the desktop). They, on the other hand, require a separate one-time server install and also require some knowledge of the available encoding methods and server-side scaling (so that you know which menu item to select) to minimize bandwidth usage.

1.2.1 RDP-based applications

Unfortunately, on the Pocket PC, all RDP clients are pretty restricted, compared to the desktop Windows (or, for that matter, Linux) counterparts – or, even those on the WindowsCE.NET 4.1+-based Handheld PC version discussed here. The latter is far superior to that of any current Windows Mobile-based implementation. Unfortunately, so far, the excellent folks at the just-linked HPC:Factor haven’t managed to “hack” the Handheld PC version onto the Pocket PC. You, however, may want to subscribe to the thread to see whether there is new information.

Note that SmartCell’s RemotePlus still (?) hasn’t been ported to the Pocket PC. Hope SmartCell does it some day: Pocket PC-based Terminal Server / Services clients are all pretty bad and a decent alternative would be more than welcome.

1.2.1.1 Terminal Services Client (TSC)

TSC is built-in in most Pocket PC’s starting with the Pocket PC 2002 operating system. (If you still can’t find it, just download it here and just install it on your Pocket PC). It’s a really-really bare-bone application, really inferior to the above-mentioned WinCE .NET version linked above and not even capable of full screen; if you do need full screen capabilities, read the following subsection.

1.2.1.1.1 vijay555's full screen TSC hack

Well-known Pocket PC developer & XDA-Developers moderator Vijay555 has fixed the above-mentioned problem of TSC’s not supporting full screen mode (also see this XDA-Dev thread and for example some cache size hacks at post number #14 there.)

Get version 0.46b. It’s, fortunately, much easier to use than most would at first think. You need to do the following:

copy vjfullscreentsc.exe to your \Windows\Start Menu\Programs on your Pocket PC and start it

execute it again (or, just click the very small, newly displayed two gray circles in the screen, just under the Start menu; in this screenshot, the mouse cursor is just over them), a menu will come up; in there, select Fullscreen TSC

it will load the TSC client (click OK)

from inside, just log in to the machine you’d like to

from the menu, you can hide the SIP (in the previous screenshot, it’s visible in the bottom right corner and can be pretty annoying if you don’t need to enter anything; then, now that the scrollbars aren’t visible either, you’ll make use of the full screen estate as can be seen for example here); if you get rid of the scrollbars then, you can scroll from here, from a submenu.

Note that, on QVGA devices,

the horizontal scrollbar is invisible (because of VJFullscreenTSC’s assuming to be running on a VGA device)

you can’t scroll down entirely with the vertical one either (the bottom 320 pixels aren’t displayed because of the above-mentioned functionality). You can, however, do the latter from the menu (and, then, of course, you can disable the scrollbars entirely).

Otherwise, I haven't encountered problems on QVGA devices either.