Extreme selection slowness with xlobby2sd on Progear tablet

[htpcSoltek]

Hi, need some help desperately here.

I'm running the latest heavy metal skin at 1024x768 on the tablet (awesome skin, btw) , running at 1280x1024 on a P4 2.4 on the server side.

I only have xlobby.exe, servers file and xlobby2sd on the tablet. Client side loads fine, connects to the server and then the problems begin. I can move the pointer around smoothly (both mouse and touchscreen work) but clicking/selecting any buttons takes at least 6-7 clicks until it registers once.
Clicking/selecting anything on win. explorer at the same time works fine.

I dual boot W98 & XP Pro on the PG, both experience the same problem so it must be a config issue somewhere. I'm an Xlobby newbie so I wouldn't even know where to start troubleshooting this. Any help, greatly appreciated!

[rhinoman]

If the tablet is beefy enough to run a full version of xlobby and then use the xnet bit to take control of the server zone you'll find there will be virtually no lag at all, its till in development though so its far from a finished solution.

Xlobby thin client works by receiving a picture from the server machine, the higher the resolution the longer it takes to send the information, at 1024*768 thats quite a bit to refresh over a wireless link, it might be worth trying the client at 800*600.

[Hiller]

I have a progear also and the quickest way to speed things up is to delete the enter and down images from the buttons directory(you could just rename them too). The big slow down it's the progear IMO it's the network. When you press a button on the thin client the network has to send the new button image (down button) to the progear and then send the normal image when it's done. This takes a lot of time so there is a long lag. I found that taking these images away speeds things up.

The progear takes a while to load the full version of xlobby but is pretty responsive once it is loaded. It seems other people don't have any problem with XNET but I can't get it to do anything yet so I don't know if this is a real option for us yet. The button image fix is a stop gap for me.

I do love using the progear as a remote though, I think it's pretty slick.

Steve

[htpcSoltek]

thanks for the quick responses, yeah, if I get this to work it'll be an excellent remote. I'll try the resolution reduction and image renaming tonight as soon as I get home.

Also, there's a quality percentage line in the servers file which I tried to reduce to 60 & 80% but it didn't make a difference, what is it supposed to do?

Hiller,
are you using 802.11b or g? Are you on W98 or XP?

rhinoman,
how do you test the full client via xnet? I'd like to give it a try too.

I'll let you guys know how it goes tonight.

TIA

[rhinoman]

To get xnet to run first set the server machine to run as a server then on the client machine tell it which machine is the server, it will then search for it and show any zones connected to it.

[htpcSoltek]

Renaming the enter/down images made a big difference but the whole thing is still too slow. Now it takes a couple of clicks to get past each entry, still unusable.

I couldn't get xnet connectivity. Setup hangs on client side (not responding) when I click connect. The fat client does show up on xnet on the server side but at that point everything is frozen.

I dropped WEP temporarily, didn't make a noticeable difference. I'll try a 11g card over the weekend to see if network throughput helps alleviate the problem.

[Hiller]

I have the Onrico (spelling is wrong there I think) card that came with the tablet installed. The reception on it is very poor though. If I don't have the wireless router very close (the next room) XLobby it's happy at all because the reception sucks. It's the old b standard card.

I still have 98 on mine. Chad put XP on his so he might be able to give you his experiences with XL on his progear.

For me the remote is very usable. There is a slight delay but if I know it's there I just have to deal with it for the moment.

XNet is something we are probably going to have to wait for. It's like number 3 or 4 on Steven's list of stuff to do but it will get done.

Steve

[htpcSoltek]

thanks Steve,
are you using the heavy metal skin? I'm dual-booting so I'll test XP tonight too but I was thinking that W98 would be the lightest of the 2 anyway.

[hjackson]

htpcSoltek, I have a ProGear that has XP Pro loaded on it. I also use the HeavyMetal skin. As a thin client, it moves fairly fast. I am using a 802.11b network. I believe the network speed and the amount of memory in the SERVER are 2 important items that can effect speed. Obviously the speed of the client PC itself is not likely to be the main factor as we are using the same PC (our OS may be different though...). As a matter of fact, my ProGear thin client works as fast as my wired LAN P4 desktop thin client. So make sure you have the latest Xlobby updates. BTW, what are the specs on your server PC?

hjackson

[htpcSoltek]

hjackson,
hmmm, you have a fast/working thin client on the Progear under XP, that's certainly good as I started doubting the cpu/mem/net bandwidth on the Progear is sufficient for xlobbysd traffic.

As per my previous posts, I dual boot W98 and XP Pro and I've seen the same slow behavior on XP Pro as well. Server is ok, P4 2.4 and 1GB mem. I'm using the latest xlobby updates (14 + 28 + latest xlobby2.zip).
The only difference so far is that I have a Linksys 11b card instead of the default Orinoco one, but signal quality is 100% (AP right next to PG for now). I've also tried going to another access point, no difference.

Default skin is totally unresponsive, I can't click on anything. On the heavy metal skin with the image renaming that Steve suggested, the Progear responds on every 2nd click or so but again becomes totally unresponsive when I get to a scrolling screen like the radio screen.

I'll swap to a 11g card on Sunday to see if that helps. I'm not sure of what else to try at this point.

-- Peter

[rhinoman]

Use this update http://www.xlobby.com/xlobby2.zip and that will alow the online updates to work and make sure you are running the very latest versions of xlobby and the client, it has been improved since pre28.

[hjackson]

htpcSoltek. My server has the same specs as yours (P4 2.4 GHZ, 1 GB mem, XP Pro). And I do use the default Orinoco card. Originally I had the same problem as you. When I initially tried the ProGear as a client with the default Xlobby skin, everything worked great, but when I switched to the HeavyMetal widescreen skin, everything bogged down. I then doubled my server's memory from 512 MB to 1 GB and downloaded the latest Xlobby revisions, and everything worked better. I've done so much other tinkering however, that the increase in speed may not be due to what I thought improved it. For example, I did delete the files in the "Resource" folder in the HeavyMetal skin, because some strange interaction with Xlobby and those files always screwed up the fonts. So aside from boosting your network speed and making sure all your Xlobby and HeavyMetal versions are up to date, you can try deleting your "Resource" folder's files. As well, try Xlobby with the default skin to see if you still have the problem.

hjackson

[htpcSoltek]

thanks for the advice, it must be some tinkering that made the difference 'cause it simply doesn't work by default.

I upgraded to a 11g card and the Progear is now responding very fast on any screen that does not have scrolling text. Scrolling text screens still screw things up. (and stay significally behind in updates, ie clock displaying seconds or scrolling radio station name in Radio button).

So, the default skin is unresponsive due to the clock on the front screen. Heavymetal is very responsive until I hit the Radio or Music/Play button.

I posted on the heavymetal skin thread to see if there's an easy way to disable scrolling, I think I'm all set if that can be done!!!