Turing your Surface RT into a Pro, via the power of the Cloud (and RemoteApps, Remote Desktop and more... think DIY DaaS)

Team blog of MCS @ Middle East and Africa - How to Convert your Surface RT to Surface Pro - Part 3

Links to All Parts:

Part 1: Install Remote Desktop Services

Part 2: Configure RemoteApp

Part 3: Configure Surface

 

In Part 1: I’ve explained how to install Remote Desktop services on the server and fix common error that you may face, in Part 2 we finished configuring Remote Desktop Services and publish RemoteApp.

This part we will test from client side machine by browsing to the RDWA and will configure Surface with RemoteApp.

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ITPro: How to Convert your Surface RT to Surface Pro – Part 1

From long time I’ve started to have all my labs on Windows Azure (will share that experience in another blog), my main motive was to get rid of my heavy ugly laptop to a light and thin one. My first pilot was to use Surface as the replacement of my laptop.

For some reason (I don’t remember it now) I’ve decided to get Surface RT not Surface Pro, I’m trying to convince myself now that RT lighter, RT is 676 grams compared to 907 grams for the Pro.

But anyway here it is my RT device, I loved the experience and the display but the second day I looked for PowerShell ISE and couldn’t find it, PowerShell ISE was my magical solution to connect to Office 365 so it’s mandatory for me. The result: PowerShell ISE is not built in with Windows RT and can’t be installed from the store.

Ok no ISE let’s install the PowerShell Module for Azure (Windows Azure VMs cmdlets) and PowerShell Module Windows Azure AD (Office 365 module), obviously you can’t install anything to RT.

The huge one when I started to look for Visio and Project Pro, and yes both are not part of Office pro which installed on the Surface and are not available on the Store. Now it’s serious I can’t work without these programs.

I started to look for a solution and first thing came to my mind is to RDP to another machine running on Azure that have everything I need, nice Idea and worked fine but annoying as you need to share the files (copy it or send it by email) between the 2 PCs, didn’t like the overall experience.

I was reading some of the new staff on Windows 2012 when I thought of RemoteAPP, what if I’ve a server on Azure running Remote App and I can use all my applications.

First things first, what is RemoteApp:

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Hum... Since I've got my MSDN credits that I'm not currently using, this sounds kind of cool to try out.