HP today announced a versatile addition to its t410 Smart Zero Client family, offering a virtual desktop environment for businesses with impressive multimedia graphics and support for two displays.

The new HP t410 Smart Zero Client can connect using all major virtualization protocols, whereas most competing zero clients are built to handle only one protocol.

HP also introduced HP Velocity, a quality-of-service software engine that improves network performance for virtual desktop environments. HP Velocity will come preinstalled as a feature on HP thin clients, including the HP t410, HP t510 and HP t610.

The HP t410 Smart Zero Client

The HP t410 Smart Zero Client delivers an impressive multimedia and end-user experience in a low-power, low-cost, reliable package while still retaining the flexibility to support a range of virtualization and desktop cloud use cases, where the data a user needs resides on a server elsewhere or in the cloud.

It is built with a high-performance Texas Instruments TMS320DM8148 ARM® Cortex processor and includes 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM, 2 GB eMMC Flash memory capacity and support for dual displays up to 1,920x1,080 pixels.

The HP t410 Smart Zero Client enables businesses to future-proof their investment by supporting all three leading virtualization protocols in one device, using Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Acceleration and ARM Neon extensions to enable a robust PC-like user experience. The HP thin client installation wizard will search for the right Microsoft®, Citrix or VMware cloud infrastructure and quickly establish a secure connection to the appropriate cloud desktop environment for all devices.

"The t410 Smart Zero Client enables customers to cost-effectively offer workers the same computing experience as a full PC environment without requiring on-device management," said Jeff Groudan, director, Marketing, Thin Clients, HP. "The t410 is an ideal solution for call centers, education, healthcare, government and hospitality environments that value reliability, zero management and energy efficiency."

HP Velocity for better network experience

HP Velocity software installed on both the HP thin client and the server in the data center enables business and government IT managers to track network activity and optimize network performance and end-user experience in real time.

HP Velocity is designed to optimize thin client networks challenged by bandwidth-hungry applications and by telecommuters working offsite or on mobile devices utilizing unoptimized network connections. It accomplishes this by correcting network packet-loss errors without the need to resend the packet, preventing noticeable latency. It also can ease bottlenecks in computing environments where one application runs on multiple networks simultaneously.

HP Velocity's unique network-monitoring tools enable IT administrators to instantly capture information in a log file, detect what's adversely affecting the network or causing lag, and correct the problems. HP Velocity enables quicker, more in-depth network monitoring and optimization.

RCR Tomlinson Ltd., which provides integrated engineering solutions to the mining, energy, resource and power sectors throughout the Asia Pacific region, is one of the first customers to use HP thin clients featuring HP Velocity.

"The use of HP thin clients running the new HP Velocity software improved the thin client performance over our network, which handles a mix of wireless, mobile data and other types of communications," said Stacey Squire, manager, ITC Infrastructure Manager, RCR Tomlinson Ltd. "We're impressed by HP Velocity's ability to monitor, report and correct in real time any packet-loss issues our network may have."

Pricing and availability

The HP t410 Smart Zero Client will start shipping in August with pricing starting at $269.

HP Velocity is available worldwide as a standard feature on the HP t510 Thin Client and HP t610 Flexible Series Thin Clients. It will be available on the HP t410 Smart Zero Client and HP t410 All-in-One Smart Zero Client beginning in August.

Additional information on HP's thin clients and virtualization solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/thincomputing and www.hp.com/go/clientvirtualization.