March 29th, 2006

Windows uber alles


Found a hack for XP Professional that allows you to use it as a Terminal Server. This was a feature that Microsoft had introduced in the SP2 beta, but they removed it from the final version. I found a hack that reenables it.

For months, the folks at our Temecula office have been complaining about how slow our database appication is, and yes, it is horrifically slow, because the database is over 1 Gigabyte, and they're trying to access it over a VPN running over a T-1 line (it used to be worse, it used to be ADSL). I felt sorry for our field guys, who were trying to use this database over a cellular modem.

Then it occurred to me, why not just set up a Terminal Server on the LAN here and do all the crunching and processing locally, only sending screen updates and keyboard/mouse clicks over the VPN. It should be like 100 times faster this way. And we won't need to order ANOTHER T-1.

This will also mean I may be able to deploy Linux more often, since the primary reason I haven't been able to was this stupid Windows-only database program.

I'm rather tired, though. I'm working OT to get this up and running by tonight, and I haven't eaten since 8 am. Bleah.