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by lentil_soup·6y ago·view on hn ↗
You reckon these kind of tablet/laptops would be able to handle remote desktop smoothly?

Since the quarantine started I've been using my laptop to remote desktop to my PC in the office (I need a pretty hefty machine so a laptop doesn't cut it). I've been surprised how well it works and opens a world of possibilities for me. I'd imagine I'm not the only one realizing this.

7 comments
I wondered a similar thing regarding remote development using VS Code's remote-dev plugins (for SSH and/or Containers).

I've done this workflow (i.e. used a local VS Code to develop on code hosted on a remote machine) quite a lot, but always using fairly well specced laptops (Core i7s, 16+gb ram etc) to connect to the remote and the experience has largely been seamless.

Anyone got any experience of this?

Looking at my local VS Code now as I am connected to a remote SSH host working on a very small python workspace it is using a couple of hundred meg of ram and fluctuating from 0-2% CPU on a i7 quad core. I don't have a large workspace in something more demanding (i.e. something where the IDE can do something useful unlike with python where it is a glorified notepad) to test with right now though :(

A Surface Go has been computationally sufficient for remote SSH dev use for VS Code with Rust with my (admittedly small) projects. I no longer bring my XPS 15 when visiting parents for extended visits. The 10" screen/keyboard is a drawback, obviously, but performance hasn't been since it's the remote machine doing the heavy lifting.
Since the edit timer has expired, I will point out that it's the 8GB/SSD model I have experience with. Total RAM usage is over 4GB and I'd expect the eMMC model to be just generally a bad time.
Yep, I have the first version with 8/128 version but the cpu is the same, I bought it mainly for for being on call with less than 1kg in the bag. For my use case it's one of the best travel machines I had, I use it with dualboot Win10-Ubuntu.

I use it for more than just remote desktop, for work related apps I use: Outlook, Teams, Notes, etc.. All 4 at the same time is too much for the tablet, but one a time is ok, most of times even on battery saving. I try to sync outlook, notes, and other apps as much as I can when I am on external power.

If you buy it thinking it's not a desktop/beefy-laptop/SurfaceProi7 substitute but a valid companion I think it will work well.

I pretty much only ever use my Surface (which is quite old now) for RDP'ing into my office desktop machines to give demos - usually via a 4G connection as a lot of places I visit don't have a public wifi network.

Only problem I've ever had was when I accidentally pulled the ethernet cable out of one of my PCs as I was leaving to give the demo....

Edit: Only other problem I had was constantly losing the Surface video adapters - solved by attaching the adapter to my Surface power supply cable with a cable tie.

Absolutely. RDC needs minimal resources so it can run on ancient and low powered devices.

You can get a $20 dock to add usb and hdmi ports so my current setup is 2 rdc sessions going (one of the go screen and one on the external 1080p monitor) and a full sized keyboard keyboard and mouse.

Yes, I've been using a low-end laptop with Pentium N5000 CPU (Gemini Lake aka "Atom-class") and 4GB RAM. Handles 1920x1200 rdp smoothly plus MS Teams and Firefox running on the laptop.

The Surface Go 2 with its more powerful CPUs and GPUs should work fine.

Should be perfect for that kind of thing. A few people use iPads for Remote Desktop.

The previous version ran Linux on it to. I don’t need one but finding myself trying to talk myself out of one. As a secondary device for travel or just throwing in a bag to browse, email etc it seems ideal. My iPad goes goes ok but think I’d struggle using it as a primary device on a work trip and prefer that more for consuming media / annotating PDFs / docs.

that's another interesting point, you could potentially remote desktop from/to a different OS as well.
They work great for that, I used my Surface 4 to RD into my workstates a few times, and was able to do 3D modeling work with it. The only downside for that kind of work is the lack of an ethernet port, but that's a given on a slim mobile device such as this.