The purpose: To enhance voice-only commands and increase safety while driving
The logic behind the Logitech ZeroTouch is solid: Build a device that will mount almost any Android phone in a car and let it be controlled solely by voice, so that you can get directions, make a call or answer a text without having to touch -- or even look at -- the display.
The execution, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
There are two versions of the ZeroTouch. One runs a little under $80 (Amazon price), comes in black and sticks to the top of your dashboard or to your windshield via a suction cup. A second costs about $60 (Amazon price) and is available in black, red or white; you clip it to the slat of an air vent. I reviewed the latter, although they're functionally the same.
The air vent mount is a small cylindrical device 1.5 in. in diameter and 1.2 in. deep. It has one flat end and tapers to a duckbill that grabs onto the louvers of an air vent. The flat end of the mount contains a strong magnet; the product package includes a separate metal plate that you can either stick onto the back of your phone or, if you use a case (it has to be reasonably thin), attach to the inside of that case.
(Note: I found that I needed to jam the ZeroTouch mount pretty forcefully onto one of the air vent's louvers in order to attach it. If your louvers are curved or deeply recessed, you may need to buy the version with a dashboard mount. And even if it does fit, you may find, as I did, that you can't aim the louvers in any direction but straight ahead, and a docked phone may block a significant amount of airflow.)
All in all, this is similar to dozens of other mounts out there. The difference with the ZeroTouch is that the mount has a Bluetooth radio in it that senses when your phone is attached, and starts the ZeroTouch Android app on your phone. (There is currently no iOS app available.) You can set the ZeroTouch to be a Bluetooth Trusted Device, so attaching the phone to the gadget bypasses your lock screen.
OF course, Android already has native voice controls, and some vendors -- Motorola being the best of them -- have added extensions that allow you to use a variety of voice control tools. Where the ZeroTouch tries to differentiate itself is by giving you a wider choice of apps you can use. For example, Google's controls limit navigation to Google Maps, but the ZeroTouch also lets you pick Waze or Navigon. Google's voice control steers you to Google Play for music; ZeroTouch lets you use Spotify or Deezer. ZeroTouch also lets you reply to incoming messages on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Google Hangouts (although you can only initiate messages over SMS).
You trigger the software by waving at the front of your phone, near the proximity sensor that is usually located near the earpiece. The ZeroTouch app chirps; you can then tell it to call or text someone, play music or navigate to someplace on a list you've already saved. If there there is more than one person or place with that name (or with a similar name), the ZeroTouch app will say the names in question and understand your response.
That's the theory. The practice was something else altogether.
Cars are difficult and noisy environments, and I found that the ZeroTouch had significant problems understanding me above the road noise beyond the four core commands of Call, Text, Play and Navigate. For example, I told the ZeroTouch to "Call Jeremy." It correctly found the two Jeremys in my phone book and asked which one I wanted to call. But when I told it which to call, the ZeroTouch seemed unable to process the request.
Worse, if nothing immediately happened, there was no feedback -- audible or visual -- about whether the device hadn't heard me, didn't understand what I said, or was simply thinking about it. And all too often, the ZeroTouch app would give up entirely and reboot the phone -- not something you want to happen while you're driving, especially if you're getting instructions about where to go.
Bottom line
As far as the physical mount is concerned, the ZeroTouch is entirely reliable. Even on rough city roads during construction season, the magnet held the phone fast during my test drives. The software, however, is not fully baked.
The idea of a $60 gadget approximating what expensive built-in car systems can do is tempting. But the ZeroTouch programmers need to go back and spend some more time on their app before they declare it ready.
Since the summer of last year we began our endeavor to envision and develop the next-generation desktop virtualization solution.
This next-generation platform, vSpace Pro 10, is a natural evolution based on our existing vSpace desktop virtualization software.
This new platform has been designed based on customer feedback and will further simplify desktop virtualization, continue our pledge of affordability, and introduce enhanced features to make it even more powerful.
vSpace Pro 10 will support the latest Windows OS including Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Stay tuned for our upcoming announcement.
Click here to read more...
Challenges
- High cost of refreshing PC hardware for 5000 call center users
- Loss of user productivity during refresh
- Consumption of valuable IT support resources during refresh
- Centralizing management of IT assets
Solution
Results
- Ability to make any necessary updates to the IT environment one time centrally and then deliver that image to end users
- Ability for users to log in from different devices and get the same session, profile, performance and operating system.
- 90% reduction in support calls to fix operating systems, hardware and desktops crashes
- Increased user focus and productivity due to elimination of desktop fan noise
- 60% savings on energy costs
About Algar Tech
With more than a decade in the market, Algar Tech offers solutions for business processes, distinguishing itself with their close relationship and commitment to each client. With international presence and a complete portfolio, Algar Tech carries in its history important partnerships, titles and certifications, in addition to being enshrined as the fastest growing IT company in Brazil according to IDC, in 2012.
Delivering agility and scalability in IT
Algar Tech has a call center with over five thousand positions, and to keep productivity up was accustomed to a process of revitalization of its IT assets every five years. This process generated high costs and required time and dedication of professionals, and these necessary updates throughout the park always had a large impact on both user productivity and especially on the IT department. The company’s greatest challenge was to find a way to leverage centralized management of its assets, which at the time were traditional desktops, and find a way to reduce the cost of these updates.
Ultimately, the solution itself had to change. The traditional model of computing had to be updated using the most modern technologies which in turn would also reduce operating costs and allow greater control and scalability. Algar’s IT found what they sought: combining Citrix virtualization and NComputing thin clients, managed with LCS consultancy, to deliver desktops on demand, flexibility and highly manageability.
Implementation and results
The delivery of desktops on demand has changed the landscape of Algar’s IT. Today, the company has a centralized Windows image that Citrix XenDesktop delivers to end users. This empowers Algar Tech to make any necessary updates to the IT environment one time centrally and then deliver that image to end users. The powerful performance end users receive is only possible with the use of the N-series Thin Clients from NComputing, which has the Citrix Receiver for Linux firmware built directly into the N-series chipset, the Numo3. This is what powers the optimized graphics performance (with reduced server processing) that end users leverage.
According to Algar Tech’s IT manager, Marcio Menegatto, the greatest impact on users was changing the culture from the use of traditional PCs to thin clients. “The difference was solved by delivering a desktop with superior capabilities to what the users were accustomed to and with the ability to log in from different devices and get the same session, profile, performance and operating system,” explains the manager.
With ROI for the project expected in the second year, Algar has replaced over 300 computers in its call center with thin clients, at an average pace of 50 per month. The goal for 2014 is to deploy 1200 N-series thin clients.
Today, it is possible to list many benefits of this technology upgrade. Among which was a 90% reduction in support calls to fix operating systems, hardware and desktops crashes. Besides delivering high performance, the N-series thin clients are also much quieter. A significant reduction in the noise within the call center helped increase user focus and productivity. According to Menegatto, Algar expects to save over 60% on their energy costs.
Algar was also able to centralize and set policies for the configuration of the N-series thin clients with the vSpace Management Center (VMC) software, allowing greater flexibility and speed in deploying the N-series thin clients. Using VMC for control of the operations, all changes in the configuration of the N-series thin clients are now performed with a few mouse clicks in the centralized, web-based tool. This architecture allows the service to be redefined in a few seconds, plus inventory and hardware control of the thin clients can be audited in real time.
Going forward, since all points of service will be standardized with the N-series thin clients, the challenges that accompany growth and update within the company will be solved. “With a central image, we are ready to onboard more employees by installing only a new N-series thin client and immediately being ready to provide that user with a high performance desktop experience,” explains Menegatto. “The adoption of the N-series thin clients and Citrix’s virtualization technologies has created a new reality for Algar’s IT. With centralized management and the use of the N-series thin clients from NComputing, all processes, from the preparation of new employees to updates in the user’s operating systems, occur faster and simpler than ever before”.
SUCCESS STORY NCOMPUTING
Challenges:
Maximizing efficiency of IT team
Firefighting hardware and software issues in a large-scale organization
Meeting growth demands with limited budget and resources
Solution:
L300 thin client solution by NComputing based upon 2 virtualized Windows Server operating systems per site providing optimal performance, redundancy and ease of local or remote management.
Benefits:
20% savings on cost of hardware=6000GBP savings per center.
IT Team focused on core task of managing and deploying new centers.
Software issues resolved in seconds.
Speed, robustness, safety and tidiness of desks for pupils.
Self-maintenance and time efficiency for onsite staff.
Two businesses, one common goal
Explore Learning and NComputing have a common ethos: to bring eLearning and technology to those who need it the most. Explore Learning is an inspiring business; created in 2001, the company brings mathematics and English tuition to 33,000 children aged 5-14 across the UK. Children typically become members and attend regular sessions at one of their 120 centers twice a week, complementing and mapping to the national curriculum. Coached by tutors and staff, students each sit at a desktop station and progress through a set of online courses adapted to their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Limited resources managing a large scale project
With 120 tuition centers open seven days a week, 5000 desktop stations and 160 servers to support, Matthew Evans, Explore Learning’s IT Director and his team of eight field, support and implementation engineers, had a sizeable challenge on their hands. The IT Director had always kept in line with smart technologies to maximize the efficiency of his headcount. Still, a physical device at each student station meant having to spend a lot of time resolving hardware and software issues. For example, if a virus should attack one of the servers, it meant “cleaning” every single machine, a task that would take days and restrict student access. It would also mean firefighting for the IT team, which would distract them from their core duty of supporting, managing, deploying and expanding tuition centers across the UK. The same applied to hardware: when an issue arose, the IT team had to hit the road to replace a workstation or ship clunky material to one of the centers, leaving the center’s tutors or staff to install it. The IT Director wanted to maximize time efficiency and remove the firefighting headache from his team’s daily jobs.
The company also had aggressive growth plans. In 2012-2013-2014 Explore Learning grew by 20%, 25% and 20% year on year – which meant doubling in size in 3 years. 2015 took the company over the 100 center mark. Finding the budget to scale was a challenge. In computing, hardware and software have a cost, but electricity is also a major cost to any deployment. They needed a scalable solution to support this growth.
Physical desktops need space too! And space also has a cost.
IT Director Matthew Evans made it his personal mission to find a cost effective solution and allow for expansion by working with smart and innovative technologies. The IT Director set himself the task of choosing a strategic technology partner who would enable Explore Learning to cut costs whilst enabling limitless growth and more importantly, providing an excellent service to the children.
Enter desktop virtualization - making cost, resource and time savings a reality
The IT team needed a solution to save budget on the cost of hardware, and to save time and energy troubleshooting software issues. The IT team first started looking at virtual desktops in 2011 and implemented the technology in April 2012.
They chose the L300, using virtualized server operating systems – initially Windows 2008R2, but later migrating to 2012R2. Explore Learning deployed on average 30 thin client devices per center making it a total of approximately 3600 thin client devices installed.
“Moving onto the L300 took away the operational headache of managing hundreds of machines in hundreds of centers all over the country – with the L300, we only have a couple of machines to manage in each center - it is a much more scalable option. And it keeps us focused on our core duty: to deliver an excellent service to the children” says Evans.
For the IT Director, it also took away the worry of having to buy hardware, or replace damaged hardware: for Explore Learning, this meant a 20% saving on the cost of buying physical machines, representing a saving of approximately 6,000GBP per center on hardware costs only. The L300 is also the “greenest” computing solution out there, with a 90% power savings over standard PCs.
“NComputing ticked all the boxes, it’s proven invaluable! The kit was easy to handle, manage and very user-friendly. The other solutions we looked at were clunky. One of the things we pride ourselves on as a company is that we look to build long-lasting relationship with our providers and we did get that feeling from NComputing, especially from the stellar technical team. It is definitely something we want to invest in to make sure we have a scalable future” concludes Evans.
A brighter future for Explore Learning’s pupils, tutors and staff
Every student now uses NComputing daily, and they have proven to be robust–standing up to use by 5-14 year-old students. The IT team wanted to make sure the deployments were complete before launching a new version of their core content in June 2016.
For the children, speed of access to tuition content is the main benefit of the deployment, “everything runs a lot faster”, adds Evans, “which enables them to do more, learn more and be more productive, without even noticing it”. Courses run smoothly with no interruption – allowing the children to keep focused and motivated.
With such a small footprint, the L300 can attach to the back of the monitor, clearing desk space and hiding cables, keeping each pupil’s desk tidy, neat and safe.
For Explore Learning’s onsite staff, the NComputing solution allows self-maintenance, which was never the case before. Less IT input is required, which makes the solution more scalable. Explore Learning opened another five tuition centers in Dallas, Texas in 2015 with the ultimate goal of over 200 centers in the UK by 2020. The company is looking forward to saving 1/3 of their future implementation costs by keeping their partnership with NComputing aligned and using desktop virtualization as a core component of their expansion plans.
Scope
One of the principal advantages of deploying multiple users on a single host–be it a PC, physical server or virtual machine–is that you can readily scale the size of your deployment as your users’ needs grow. Rather than being forced to purchase expensive new computing resources for each new user, you can simply expand the capacity of your host system. vSpace Server 6 now allows you to extend the number of users per server up to 100 users depending on your user workload, host system performance, and client devices being used.
The number of users, intended application suite and overall performance expectation determine how powerful a host system must be in order to deliver the desired end-user experience. This document provides high-level guidelines for determining the system requirements for various numbers of L-series and M-series users with various computing workloads. This document can be used as a starting point for sizing your deployment – but your own in-house testing should be used for the final determination of your host systems’ configurations.
Understanding Use Cases for General Usage and Video Playback Workloads
Prior to deploying vSpace, you should develop use cases for the users you expect to connect to a host. An important consideration in developing use cases involves determining the number and types of applications users will need to operate. These requirements help you identify and measure the users’ standard workloads. For example, you should measure the CPU, memory and storage utilization for a typical user workload in your environment. This workload data and the total expected number of users will help you determine the system requirements for your host system.
An important concept to keep in mind is the difference in resource usage seen when comparing ordinary office application usage and multimedia streaming. As demonstrated in the chart below, our Core i7 test system was able to support roughly 60 users whose workload was comprised entirely of common office application usage. Once the use-case switched to video streaming however, the number of users that could be adequately supported by the same hardware specs dropped to 20. This is a good example of how demanding video streaming and other similar tasks (such as browsing flash intensive websites) can be on a system. With regards to video streaming, another defining variable is the size of the video being streamed. For example, 720p video contains approximately three times (3x) the amount of pixel data as 480p video. Understandably that translates to a notable difference in resource requirements between the two formats.
For the purpose of our testing, workloads were divided into three typical usage scenarios each of which involved sequentially cycling through and completing tasks within the listed applications. These workload profiles have been detailed below. We've also included test data for two different levels of video fidelity which represent "extreme" usage scenarios wherein all users present were streaming videos. Naturally, you are not required to build your host specifications around extensive high definition video streaming unless that is a core requirement for your deployment. Read more tech details here....
