Filepro-list Digest, Vol 20, Issue 33

[Jay]

>> John Esak <john at valar.com> wrote:
>> "Can you tell me more about disabling some of the graphic 
>> overhead you mention above. Where is this stuff, and what 
>> are some of the names of the items to disable.  I am curious 
>> to learn as much about RDP as I can."

Sure John.  When you open RDP, normally rush to get to where they need to
go; sometimes, it's nice to have a look around before taking that leap onto
the info superhighway.  
Click "OPTIONS" and you're presented with 5 tabs: General, Display, Local
Resources, Programs & Experience.

Choosing GENERAL allows you to customize the RDP connection's login
settings, so that you can save the connection to easily get to a specific
destination.  I use it frequently and save the settings to a folder on my
desktop.

DISPLAY allows you to reduce or increase the depth of the color palette, as
well as the size of the remote desktop

LOCAL RESOURCES gives you the option of hearing sounds created from the
remote machine, effects of using Windows shortcuts (i.e. CTRL-C to copy &
CTRL-V to paste).  What is nice about this feature is you can copy from the
remote & paste it on the local machine.  Other options allow you to bring
your printers, disk drives & serial ports with you when connecting.  I don't
use this part too much, but I'm sure that I'm under-utilizing it.

PROGRAMS gives you the ability to auto-launch an application on the remote
machine upon logging in.  For the average, less saavy user, this allows
administrators to give someone this shortcut (which can be emailed) with the
application setup to auto-launch.  Basically, it applies the KISS principle
(Keep It Simple Stupid).

EXPERIENCE is where all the options for turning off items such as Bitmap
Caching, Desktop Themes & Backgrounds and Animation.  You can also use the
dropdown box to allow RDP to pre-determine which settings to enable &
disable.  The best response time is to choose the slowest connection type
from the dropdown box, as it only enables bitmap caching.

Enjoy your new experiences with RDP.

Jay Kantrowitz

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Report speed over VPN issue (Jay)
   2. RE: Report speed over VPN issue (John Esak)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 08:13:53 -0400
From: "Jay" <kandoit at msn.com>
Subject: Re: Report speed over VPN issue
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>, <swiltsie at micro-mui.com>
Message-ID: <BAY106-DAV120943E059156AFB4FF815B7900 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Steve,
I have a similar situation with a client of mine.  Also running filePro in a
mixed Windows (XP & 98 clients) environment on the local desktops (on a
Novell Netware network).  I have the filePro data files on a mapped drive,
pointing to the Novell server, and the clients each have the EXE's (dclerk,
dreport, etc) on their local desktops.  filePro environment variables are
all in a local batch file that's called when the desktop icon is executed.

I've setup the local firewall with a NAT policy to allow Terminal Services
from a PUBLIC IP address directly to the user's client.  This way, from any
remote location (a branch office, their home, an air card, or a wireless
hotspot) all they need is an onramp to the internet, and with Remote Desktop
(built into the XP operating system) the remote user simply needs the IP
address and the local login credentials.  Remote Desktop is also available
for 98, but it's not built into the OS; it is downloadable from Microsoft's
website.  

To access Remote Desktop, you can either navigate to it...ALL PROGRAMS->>
ACCESSORIES->> COMMUNICATIONS->> REMOTE DESKTOP CONNECTION, -OR-
RUN->>mstsc. The same scenario will work over their VPN, but they 
RUN->>sacrifice
speed.  On the VPN, once the connection is established, they'll need the
LOCAL IP address of the client machine rather than the PUBLIC IP address.

To view reports, add -pv to the command line in the menu entry.  To print
locally, add -pt to the command line instead of -pv.  

In my example client, the company's controller needs to do the same
thing...view first, then either save the file for future reference, or print
it remotely.  I copied the default menus & modified all of the menu entries
to be batch/script files with "-p \tmp\fpreports\$REPORT" in the command
line, and defined $REPORT to a user-friendly name with a ".txt" extension.
After generating the report to a file, I followed the dreport line with
"type $REPORT | more" so the user is put right into a view mode of the
report just generated.  With a little training (and the user knowing that
telecommuting allowed her greater work & time efficiencies as well as a big
savings on gas & tolls), she saves the report to a default folder on her
desktop and emails it to herself, then prints the report to the printer
connected to the remote machine.

While this all may sound a bit detail intensive, it took me about an hour to
set it up for the company's controller, and about 20 minutes to train her
how to use it.  

The nice thing about Remote Desktop is that you can modify the online
options to eliminate the caching of desktop bitmaps and some of the
graphic-intensive items on the desktop.  On pcAnywhere, you don't get that
option & end up sacrificing the Windows GUI for speed.  I've found that most
power-users are more interested in speed than the bells & whistles that the
graphics display.

Hope this helps.

Jay Kantrowitz

> Steve Wiltsie <swiltsie at micro-mui.com> wrote:
> The problem is that the wireless notebook needs to access the network 
> via
a
> mapped drive - not PC Anywhere. This works but is pretty slow for menu 
> and screen functions. The real problem is in generating reports to 
> view or print. A report that would have been ready in a couple of 
> minutes is still selecting records an hour later!!! I tried it with 
> the filePro programs installed on the notebook and didn't see any 
> increase in speed. How can I get the reports to prepare faster over 
> this VPN link with the existing hardware/software?
> (Switching operating systems is not an option)


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 14:46:12 -0400
From: "John Esak" <john at valar.com>
Subject: RE: Report speed over VPN issue
To: "Fplist (E-mail)" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Message-ID: <JIECJPPMJGMIINMGGNGAAEIAOHAA.john at valar.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

well as a big
> savings on gas & tolls), she saves the report to a default folder on 
> her desktop and emails it to herself, then prints the report to the 
> printer connected to the remote machine.

We do so many of the same things you do, except that we use Sco Open Server
and filePro with Facetwin or Anzio  on the RDP'd box.  I think you have
described a good working model regarding the batch scripts and so forth to
your Windows based system. The RDP option is so nice because it gives the
remote user an entire desktop (usually their entire desktop to work with
rather than just a character -based login to our filePro stuff. I'm leaning
more and more toward making this a reality for more of our users.

>
> The nice thing about Remote Desktop is that you can modify the online 
> options to eliminate the caching of desktop bitmaps and some of the 
> graphic-intensive items on the desktop.  On pcAnywhere, you don't get 
> that

Very true. The PCAnywhere also is just a giant bitmap itself, meaning it can
not be read with a screen reader. Very bad for me, in fact useless.  Can you
tell me more about disabling some of the graphic overhead   you mention
above. Where is this stuff, and what are some of the names of the items to
disable.  I am curious to learn as much about RDP as I can. I think it is
fantastic. Although, our systems and servers are so fast, that speed  has
not been any problem so far. At least, I'm not bothered by or even notice
any speed problems yet.  Incidentally, even more useful to me than RDP'ing
directly to anyone's desktop is the virtual desktop that can be given to any
user just logging into a main RDP server. It can look almost exactly like
the user's own desktop, and the user can STILL run his own desktop at the
same time. this is pretty cool stuff.

John






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End of Filepro-list Digest, Vol 20, Issue 33
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