Attempts to re-purpose thin clients for the latest virtual desktop solutions have met with mixed success, because they were originally designed to work with Windows terminal services. Pano Logic, however, thinks it has the answer in the form of a new 'zero client' engineered specifically for the virtual era.

The hardware at the heart of Pano Logic's Pano System differs from a traditional thin client in that it has no processor of its own, or memory or storage. More than that, there's no firmware, no operating system nor, indeed, any local software whatsoever. All you get is a collection of interfaces to link a desktop display, keyboard, mouse and other peripherals to the local area network (LAN), all packed into a tiny metal cube some 3.5in square and just 2in high. It's also remarkably frugal when it comes to power, consuming just 5W in operation and even less in standby.

By itself, of course, the Pano Device is of little value; we connected one to our LAN and all we got was a blank screen. That’s because it's only one part of a larger solution, designed to connect users to virtual Windows desktops hosted by a remote VMware server, with custom provisioning and management software also required to join the two together.

To test the Pano System, therefore, the first thing we needed was a VMware server which, for us, meant downloading the free ESXi hypervisor. However, for most customers a commercial licence to use VMware Virtual Infrastructure or vSphere 4 will be needed, along with vCenter in order to take full advantage of what the Pano System has to offer, such as automated provisioning.

The next requirement was for a virtual machine for the Pano Device to access. For this we created a virtual machine (VM) running Windows XP, the only operating system currently supported, although Windows 7 is promised shortly. We then installed Pano DAS onto our new VM, a service that links the virtual desktop to the Pano hardware, using code specially optimised for the kind of multimedia applications with which conventional thin clients struggle to cope.

Lastly we downloaded and installed Pano Manager, a web-based console used to manage the Pano System. Supplied as a self-contained VMware appliance, this proved quick and easy to configure, providing a set of easy-to-understand tools to first discover, then manage, Pano Devices over the network.

Once we'd done all that we were ready to start using the Pano Device we’d been sent. They come in two colours, either black or shiny chrome, with a triangular activation button on top. Ours was of the chrome variety with a 10/100Mbit/s connector at the back for LAN attachment, together with analogue video connectors and USB sockets for keyboard and mouse.

A tiny speaker is also built in, along with external speaker and microphone jacks. Plus there's a third USB port which can be used to attach a CD/DVD or other storage device such as memory stick or external hard drive. A local printer can also be attached, and the USB port can be used to connect an optional external video adapter for users who need a dual display.

In our case we attached a single monitor, then located the device on the LAN from the Pano Manager. On a large network, virtual desktops can be grouped and automatically assigned via Active Directory and vCenter integration, but with only one we opted to create a permanent fixed association to our device.

A few seconds later, the button on the top turned blue, the monitor sprang into life and we were presented with the usual Windows logon screen. The only slight hiccup was working out how to set the screen resolution, which is done from a taskbar app rather than by right-clicking the desktop in the usual manner. But, once we'd worked that out, it was hard to tell we were connected to a remote desktop rather than a local PC. The display, mouse and keyboard were all very responsive and it all worked just as it should, even down to streaming video from YouTube and the BBC iPlayer - normally a real no-no for a thin client.

There's no CD/DVD drive, but an external drive can be plugged in, and we had no problems using a USB stick as the Pano Device uses the native XP drivers on our virtual machine to manage the hardware.

Performance is determined largely by the specs of the server, but we were impressed even with our modest setup. We also liked the ability to switch the Pano Device off and then quickly reconnect to our virtual desktop, which continued to run on the VMware host. We also liked the ability to manage both virtual desktops and the physical hardware centrally, for example limiting access to the USB port on the Pano Device to prevent its misuse.