Dell cooks up an Android PC on an HDMI stick
Thin-clients are great for security and keeping everyone on the same software platform page but they can be a pain to set up. Dell's Wyse division, which has been doing thin-clients for decades, has cooked up a new way to avoid the thin-client setup trouble: An Android-powered, universal-thin client called the Wyse Cloud Connect.
The Cloud Connect is about as large as an over-sized USB stick. While it comes with a USB port, to use it you'll need a device such as an HDTV monitor or a modern laptop with an HDMI or Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) port. To "install" it, all you need do is plug Cloud Connect into the device, plug in a power-source with the mini-USB port, and you're ready for business.
Inside it there's a multi-core Cortex-A9 ARM System-on-Chip (SoC), 8GBs of internal storage, and 1GB of RAM. This is powered up with Android 4.1, Jelly Bean. It also comes with a micro-SD card slot, which can support up to 72GBs of additional storage. It also comes with 802.11a/b/g/n networking and Bluetooth
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Once in place you can use it with a USB or Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to turn any properly equipped display into an Android PC. If you want more than Android's goodness, and Dell and its partners certainly hope you do, the Cloud Connect also comes with Dell's Wyse Cloud Client Manager software-as-a-service (SaaS). With this IT managers can manage device so that it can be used with the appropriate thin-client, back-end programs.
By default that's Dell Wyse PocketCloud software for remote access to physical or virtual desktops, apps and content. By itself this enables you to access your office Mac or Windows desktop.
If you want more, and Dell and its partners hope you will, you can use it with Citrix, Microsoft or VMware thin-client servers or for Web-based apps. In short, the Wyse Cloud Connect provides IT department with a tasty dish of a way to easily get both conventional and BYOD users on the enterprise desktop with no messy setup annoyances.
For a list price of $129 I can see many companies finding the Wyse Cloud Connect to be the perfect meal for their road warriors.
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