Introduction

AnywhereTS will help you turn ordinary PCs into soft thin clients. The soft thin clients will be able to connect to a Windows Terminal Server, without the need for other operating systems or hardware. If the PCs have an operating system installed, it can be left on the harddisk intact as AnywhereTS will not modify the client PCs' harddisks. In fact, we recommend to disconnect any harddisks in the client PCs, since they are not used and is just a source of failure.

Network boot support

The soft thin client operating system is most often loaded over the network when the client PC is turned on, using PXE technology.

You should make sure your clients can boot using PXE boot. This is often configured in the BIOS on the client PCs. If you do not have PXE enabled network cards, you can either install new network cards that support PXE network booting, or boot from a floppy or CD a instead.

The client that is loaded over the network is less than 10MB, and loads in a few seconds. The entire boot process until end users can login typically takes 40 seconds on average PC hardware.

PC hardware

The PCs that will be turned into soft thin clients can be common office PCs. They require a screen (CRT or flat-panel), a standard keyboard, a mouse (Serial, PS/2 or USB) and an Ethernet network card (100Mbit network cards work very well, 10Mbit work but creates delays that end users percieve as annoying. Token ring cards are currently not supported). These PCs are often retired hardware that were considered underpowered, but re-using them as soft thin clients means even old "slow" computers will feel just as fast as any other computer because all application computing happens at the server.

Note that the soft thin clients rarely support any other local hardware besides the screen, keyboard and mouse; local printes have to be turned into network printers and more exotic hardware like card readers, CD burners, webcams and similar are not supported. (AnywhereTS Pro supports more local hardware than the free version. Contact us for more info).

User interface

AnywhereTS is built as a Windows wizard and runs on Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server. Every time AnywhereTS is started it will ask you specific questions about the soft thin client, ultimately generating a bootable image. If you want to change a configuration you will have to do the process over again.

Client boot options

AnywhereTS will guide you through the different settings, leaving you with either a system for network booting, or a boot floppy or CD-R as approriate. If you choose boot floppy, the application will create the boot floppy disc. If you choose a CD-R boot, you must have a CD burner with appropriate software to burn standard .ISO files which the application will produce for you. Using CD-RW discs will let you try different settings without destroying CD-R discs.

AnywhereTS can also create a standalone CD-R version. This version will not boot from the network, as everything is contained on the CD-R disc. This method is not possible with floppy disc, as the medium is too small to contain the complete client.

Configurations

You can create any number of soft thin clients with AnywhereTS. However, AnywhereTS can only maintain one set of configurations at a time, and it is preferable if your client PCs hardware is the same (for sound, network cards, graphics cards etc). You also have the option to include all drivers in the configuration, and let the client autodetect which hardware is present at boot time.

When the client boots, it will automatically connect to the specified Windows Terminal Server. AnywhereTS supports connecting to Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. The Windows 2000 Server is somewhat more limited in that it does not support client audio, and only 8bit (256) colors.