ReflectionX vs eXceed

[Kevin J. Mattakat]

Anyone have any opinions on ReflectionX vs eXceed? I am testing them both, however at the moment my needs are very basic (and my experience with Unix is limited - Sorry, router jock pulling dual-duty). That said, I am sure I am not using them to their full potenial. Unfortunatly I have to make a decision to purchase 10-30 copies very quickly and do not have the time to familiarize myself with both products.

So far I am leaning towards the ReflectionX product. It seems to be fairly easy to use and the telnet client is customizable to send frequently used text commands to the session via a custom toolbar. This is very handy for router troubleshooting.

The Hummingbird product seems to have a lot more features, whether I will need them or not I do not know. Also seems to be a little more confusing to use and I need a solution that is as intuitive as possible for our users, I don't do support (router jock - remember).

Basicaly what I need is a good X server, possibly combined with a decent FTP/TFTP and Telnet client. I will also need to provide X connectivity via VPN or other remote access solution. NFS is not something I am looking at now but could be in the future if there is an advantage to using it.

I have also tested some lower priced solutions and while the Xserver part seemed to work fine they were lacking in features I may need later.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

Kevin,

I personally think Exceed beats the crap out of re-puke-tions. Hummingbird has had an X product for over 10 years now. It will do your X for sam, swinstall, glance, swremove, xterms, etc...

You can cut and paste from windows app's into X windows and back the other way!

You can LOG screen's to a file (All terminal IO).

And we used to be a reflections shop but we (I had it) changed about six years ago (shortly after I came here).

live free or die
harry

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

I've also used both and can tell you that the Exceed product is far better to use and is less system hungry on your PC.

It certainly gets my vote!!!

HTH
Michael

[harry d brown jr]

kevin,

Michael brought up a good point, I usually have about 10 exceed windows open, even on win95 machines (back a few years), without any issues.

live free or die
harry

[Kevin J. Mattakat]

Thanks for the quick response guys.

Harry, not sure if I will need to do all the SAM and SWremove/swinstall etc. (not that I would know how - just learning my way around right now) but since it looks like I am destined to be the administrator of these servers, I best get the something that supports all the fixin's.

We are setting up a couple of HPUX servers for OpenView and a number of the users will be students so I will need to lock down the access to just about everything but a pre-configured Xclient session for OV only. I am sure eXceed allows you to do this.

Other users will be WAN engineers who may need some other access to the box.

We don't plan on using the servers for file sharing at this time. Router config backup and syslogs would be about it for now.

At any rate, resource usage on the client machines is always an issue so it is good to know that exceed is more friendly in that department.

Thanks again for the help.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

When we started with X (about 7 years ago) I also tried both and we decided to go for Reflection, but I cannot remember why.

Now several releases later, for which Reflection decided to build in lots of web-crap, they finaly decided to listen to their users.

I'm currently testing Reflection-X 10.0 Alpha, and it's looking good. Scroll wheel support at last, support for the use of a single screen in dual head video and not a single crash so far.

OTOH I should maybe have a look at the latest Hummingbird too

Good luck with your decision

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

I use rx simply because I got used to it.

You can copy paste, screen shot easier than exceed (press alt and select!)

xdmcp direct/indirect works well, I've not had a render problem with the Xserver, even with the xscreensaver and performance suits me fine.


If I were you I'd look at licencing fees because at the end of the day, the functionality will be much the same with buttons in different places.

Later,
Bill

[Kevin J. Mattakat]

Has anyone had experience with the customer support on these? The Reflection guys seem to be fairly tenitive so far (of course they are looking for a sale) where I have not heard anything from the Hummingbird team.

Thanks again for all your opinions.

[harry d brown jr]

Kevin,

Hummingbird has their own user forum:

http://www.hummingbird.com/support/usergroups.html

And if you decide to go with exceed, here's a good xterm startup for "xstart":

/usr/bin/X11/xterm -sl 2000 -ls -sb -cr Wheat -T `hostname` -bg MidnightBlue -fg Wheat -fn 7x13 -fb 7x13B -display @d


live free or die
harry

[Chris Vail]

Forget 'em both. Get Citrix Metaframe for Unix. Don't EVEN do X to the desktop. You can share licenses with the M$ Citrix servers, and just build a Citrix pool.

Its faster, and a heckuva lot easier to maintain. It works pretty good over dialup, which NEITHER Reflection or Exceed can say. (I've got both on my home system but Citrix is what I use when I telecommute).

You can go to www. citrix.com for details: they offer a 45-day, 99 user evaluation for free. Their service sucks, but I really haven't had much need for it. The only tip I need to offer is to use pfs_mount on the cd.

Chris

[Kevin J. Mattakat]

Sounds good Chris - but seems to be a little pricey $6K for 15 users. Exceed is a little over half of that for 10 lic. and Reflection is even less than that. I will give it a test but I think the $$ may disqualify it.

Thanks for the input, though.

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Kevin,

some of the others here complained about the ressource management of reflectionX. This is a question of configuration in my opinion. I use Reflection for some years now. The standard configuration is really silly, but if you change some things, it's much better. For example, if you do a standard german installation you will get a japanese keyboard.... :-( And by default, the calculations will be done on the UNIX server, not on your poor PC, which is nonsense in my opinion. Also backspace doesn't work until you change configuration. But if you know the steps to do, Reflection is a really stabile and cheap product which i like very much.

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

And if you want an army of support (the internet), install the complete Cygwin set (www.cygwin.com) on you PC and add the XFree set (ftp://mirrors.rcn.net/pub/sourceware/cygwin/xfree/binaries/4.2.0) over that. I'm not finished testing with it yet, but it's free and functional.

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

I have used both Reflection X and Exceed. Both do good job. My preference is Reflection X, because it seems more simpler to use , whereas Exceed has tonnes of options and tends to be confusing.

Not sure about support, because never needed to use one.

HTH
raj

[Chris Vail]

About the Citrix Metaframe for HP/UX: we
buy the 3 user license for ~$2500. This is
enough to get it up and running. We save
money by pooling our licenses with the Win2k
Citrix farm. Its the same license regardless
of hardware platform. Our per-seat cost
drops to about $100/each thereafter.

The real advantage is the ability to foist the maintenance of the clients off to the NT administrators.

If you can't find a good price: email me
direct: cvail "at" ercot dot com and I'll give you some contact info.

Chris

[Robert Gamble]

I have used both ReflectionX and Exceed.

Both are good solid products.

I find ReflectionX slightly easier to setup (more intuitive interface), but almost identical features in both applications.

I've used the cygwin software and did not like it. With windows applications, I am lazy: if I can't figure out how to set it up in 5 minutes with the default options, I uninstall it.

I have not tried the Citrix software.

Good Luck!

[Wodisch]

Hello Kevin,

in the past we had a lot of problems with eXceed, but NOT with Reflection/X - SAM windows not opening, ITO-Windows not opening, that kind of stuff. Using the *other* product on the same PC (without reboot) did work. This perhaps has changed with the more recent releases of eXceed, but I still like Reflection/X more :-)

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch

[Mark Fenton]

Kevin,

I've used eXceed and ReflectionX (and several other X-servers to boot) and must note that from the user standpoint, there's almost no difference (you say potahto, I say...). From the administration standpoint, I can't comment beyond the experience I've had with eXceed, which has been positive.

The chief issue I have with both of these products is that they assume that your workstation (where they're installed) is YOUR workstation. -- ie no per-user customization of the Xserver. This isn't usually a big deal, especially when your workstation IS YOUR workstation.

Best regards.
Mark