A review of the new 10Zig 5818v WE8 Thin Client

10Zig 5818v

10Zig 5818v

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by 10Zig to do a review of their newest and latest thin client, the 10Zig 5818v WE8 Thin Client and as you may (or may not) know me, I’m always curious to see what’s new in modern days technology.

 

Initially my idea was to spin up a Microsoft NT4 Terminal Server maybe even with the ancient version of Citrix’s MetaFrame to show the difference in the interfacing (NT4 – WE8) but I couldn’t find the source for NT4 anymore so I had to revert to plan B.

So when I received the package I opened it up and found the Thin Client Device, a stand, a 12v power adapter, a wheel mouse and a DVI-VGA Adapter. As I was doing this review at home and I don’t own any monitors (we’re all equipped with laptops and tablets) I hooked up my TV screen to the thin client which worked without any problems.

First thing to notice that there are two DVI display ports available so I can hook up multiple screens without having to use a displayport adapter or splitters. Second thing I noticed was the PS/2 port for a keyboard.

I plugged the 10Zig 5818v WE8 Thin Client in and powered it on and made a small video of the initial setup:

After the initial setup I launched the Citrix StoreFront environment and started a desktop. As you can see the first desktop didn’t launch, I guess the XenDesktop enviroment had to boot some more VM’s which took to long so I started a XenApp desktop and it performed amazingly well:

The device comes with the newest Citrix receiver, an RDP client and a VMware View client (5.3) so you’re covered for the most common environments.

Although this device is relatively easy to configure the key point of having these thin clients is the management software. installed the 10Zig Management software on my lab just to see what I could do with it. It uses MySQL and as far as I can see the GUI doesn’t allow you to configure MS SQL or other databases. I had to install the management software by hand as the included DVD doesn’t run the installer by using the setup but this could be caused by the fact I’m running WS2012. The 10Zig Manager gives a proper overview for managing thin clients and is easy to understand and use, I was able to configure the thin client using the registry within minutes. More tasks can be found on the 10Zig website:

10Zig did a great job with this new thin client and the management console but I would add ThinKiosk by Andrew Morgan to make management even easier and lock the thin client a bit further.

 

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Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is a Staff Solutions Architect for End User Computing at Nutanix. Kees has driven numerous Microsoft and Citrix, and RES infrastructures functional/technical designs, migrations, implementations engagements over the years.

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