best remote control

[Jack_36]

Hi.

what's the best way to take control of a distant PC ( thru the LAN network )

PC Anywhere ?
( Well known, number 1 ? -> but that's not a very good point !! )


Any other ?

Anybody got good/bad experience with this kind of products ?

Thanks

Jack

[Georg Tresselt · Accepted solution]

Had you asked for the most expensive, I would have recommended Tivoli Remote Control.

[Paul R. Dittrich]

We make heavy use of a product called Remotely Anywhere, developed by a company called 3am Labs and sold through Binary Research.

It's very flexible and powerful with good support. Performance varies with the available bandwidth because it's not a "screen scraper".

The client end is your choice of java-enabled browsers.

HTH,
Paul

[Frederic Zeller]

Hi

I'm satisfied with VNC

it's FREE and multi-platform

You can find it here :

http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

It runs on :

Linux,Solaris ,Windows 9x/2000/NT (Intel Win32)
Macintosh


Tried it on Windows and Mac : No problem


It's not the fastest but most certainly the cheapest !!

And it works fine

HTH

Fred


HTH

Fred

[Patrick Ruane]

I'm gonna back Frederic up here (keeps happening!), VNC is free, multiplatform and easy to install & use. Not only that, but because it's free, people have modified it for their own uses. You can get the full fat version, small versions that take up less disk space and versions that run over slower connections. It may not be as fully featured as PC Anywhere and the like, but this gives it advantages in ease of use and stability.

Patrick.

[Ron Kinner]

We have used pcAnywhere for our satellite links for several years. It's slow and sometimes seems to forget to listen for a connection and we have to have the remote PC restarted. Even the connection to the pc in the lab seems a bit poky and it's on a 100 M LAN.

Recently we have installed radmin on a system in California (we're in Florida) and it seems to be pretty reliable and a lot faster than pcAnywhere. www.radmin.com
It's not free but I heard it was reasonable.

Ron

[Jack_36]

Hi All

If I count correctly :

Tivoli Remote Control :
1 point (Expensive)

Remotely Anywhere :
1 point (good)

VNC : 2 points ( good AND Free !! )

PC Anywhere : 1 point ( bad )

radmin : 1 point


So : The winner is ... VNC

I'm going to try that

Thanks

Jack

[tony calvo]

go with VNC it is free and very small program. you can installed very easy.

no problem. a lot better than any other. If your objetive is to control remote computers.

[Rune J. Winje]

Also have a look at DameWare mini Remote control.
http://www.dameware.com
(download link in lower left corner under the 'Current Versions' heading)

Works fine in NT/Win2K/XP and some of the good things are:
* small "footprint"
* 30-day free trial
* licensing per administator use
* I personally like the 'look & feel' and simplicity
* remotely install/deinstall to any PC in the network (even per session is both possible and quick)

Especially the last point was a life-saver when SMS at a customer site went 'belly-up' to the point where clients 'auto-magically' de-installed themselves as SMS clients and thus also lost the remote control funtionality...


Cheers,
Rune

[Decroos Marc]

My votes :

PcAnywhere : we still use it on some server but is not cheap and lacks some modern functionality.

RemoteAdmin : almost free (a site license is really not expensive) We use it on most of the clients. Has also command-line interface. But seems to be a "bandwidth-eater" on modem-line.

VNC: For some strange reason we cannot get it working like it should. I did already two evaluation installs on several machines and over and over again we get problems with screen refreshes not working, hanging connections....so sorry. I know most of the people are crazy about it but I really hate it , for the moment ....
I will give it a new chance within a year or two.

Dameware : probably the best one but maybe also expensive (I have no idea)
It is just wonderfull that you remotely install it - take over the screen and if you like remotely uninstall it without any reboot ...
You can combine it with a lot of other management functionality for NT/W2K/XP systems ...

Conclusion: if you have the money go for Dameware. If not take VNC and if you have the same troubles liek we had go for Remote Admin.
Regards,
Marc