This is probably going to be the biggest single firmware release this year from Teradici. I sware every time Teradici releases a major rev they do something else awesome that was previously "impossible" on a Zero Client. Well Firmware 3.5 is going to blow your freakin' mind.
USB 2.0
I have to go straight to the big guy. USB2.0. That's right 2.0. As a very strong Zero Client advocate do you know how much crap I've taken with the stinkin' USB 2.0 issue. Never mind that hardly any devices use the throughput of 2.0, or even if you had that kind of throughput what it would do on the back end. After all, that USB traffic is going through PCoIP, and PCoIP is compressed/decompressed inside a VM, and this VM is running on an ESX host with a hundred other VMs, and that ESX host probably only has a 2G backplane, AND that backplane would be maxed out by just four USB 2.0 running at full speed... Nevermind all of that!!! USB 2.0 is why I take a bunch of crap. No more!
The wizards at Teradici in firmware 3.5 have through a simple firmware update made USB 2.0 possible. How is that possible? Because the physical interfaces have always been 2.0! The code just hadn't been written to run it at those speeds, and honestly why would you! If your users need 480mbs speed on USB I don't think they should be doing VDI... but I digress.
The real reason USB 2.0 is a good thing, and why giving me crap about my support for Zero Clients only running USB 1.1 is that transfers are slow... 8M is about the top speed and that's if the wind is blowing in all the right directions. The fact is devices that have USB 2.0 transfer faster, often 2x as fast, sometimes more. So that does put a hurtin' on those who love Zero Clients (yours truely) and the need for speed (also yours truely). Well, early testing of firmware 3.5 and USB 2.0 show a 3x improvement in bulk transfer rates. This means less waiting for something to copy to a USB drive, and something I think more people will care about... USB burners. Yea, they work a hell-of-a-lot better in firmware 3.5. Dare I say "supported"?
So ya, USB 2.0... it's kinda a big deal.
Imprivata SSO
It makes me sad that a year after I wrote a work around to get Imprivata to work on a Zero Client, Teradici has replaced me... with a fully supported Firmware that supports Imprivata OneSign. If you work at a hospital this is going to be pretty big news for you. Thin Clients can be problematic with HIPAA security requirements, after all there is an OS there so the potential for information being stored/stolen is a constant concern. I know from personal experience (see my blog) that Zero Clients are the way to go in these types of highly secure environments, no OS, no way to keylog anything. The one major hurtle has been to get proximity card readers to work on a Zero Client. Sure you could have used my work around but it wasn't a real solution, you lost follow me desktop with my solution, but that is no longer the case. Now you get all the functionality you need and no work arounds required. I hope to see a lot more Zero Clients in a lot more health institutions in the near future.
802.1x
I'm seeing this more and more, if you don't know what 802.1x is you may know what RADIUS is or Cisco NAC, Microsoft NAP. Basically you can't plug anything into my network unless you are an authenticated user. It's fitting that 802.1x showed up at the same time Imprivata SSO showed up, after all a lot of hospitals need this too. Hospitals, Financial Institutions, Government... yea, many places have been waiting on this feature, well now its here.
IPv6
Really? This is one of those things that I know some people want but everytime I hear it I just think "really". Why not just NAT your IPv6 traffic and keep your internal traffic IPv4, its not like there is some huge push for IPv6 anytime in the near future, but hey, I know people ask for this, now you have it... sure we could have had USB 2.0 sooner but someone had to give you (government institutions) IPv6. 
Helpdesk Support
More on this later I have yet to fully test it. Basically with this firmware you can apparently give a zero client access to a helpdesk VM... interesting but I have to see for myself what this means and how I can abuse it.
I'm sure there are other bug fixes, and smaller things going on, probably another change in the log file format that I'll have to pick up on! (Yea thats for my friends at Teradici) But honestly, this list is pretty freakin' impressive and I would like to say thank you to all at Teradici who have worked so hard on this release, its a big one.
Oh and BTW, if you have issues with Firmware 3.5 go to http://techsupport.teradici.com its free and is the best place to go for any zero client issue.
UPDATED
I just saw this on Teradici's site, thought it worth mentioning:
** NOTE If you use the PCoIP Management Console, upgrade to PCoIP Management Console release 1.7.0 prior to upgrading to Firmware 3.5.0 **
Gunnar Berger
