If you have to take care of computers for a living, or rely on them for yourlivelihood you know what I'm talking about. Your pager goes off, or a customer calls. It's a downed website that requires you to hop in your carto fix it on some cold lonely morning around 3am. Looking for good remote control software?
So was I. Here's what I found...
I was looking for some software that would let me remotely administer myclient's mostly Windows servers and Windows based PC's. I work withcomputers for a living. I'm often called on to fix this or that thing. And a lotof times I can't get to a remote site fast enough, so having a good way toadminister systems remotely would allow me to make more money, as well as havemore of a life!
The Remote Control Solution had to meetthe following requirements:
1) Work from either Internet Explorer, Mozilla or Firefox
2) Work from multiple Operating Systems like Windows, Linux, etc.
3) Easy to configure and setup
4) Good Performance
5) Good Security Features
6) Low Bandwidth and Resource Requirements
7) Reasonable cost
After reviewing a whole lot of remote control products, I narrowed my choices down the following 4 contenders:
1) GoToMyPC
2) LogMeIn
3) VNC
4) PC Anywhere
You'll find my review and recommended choice for the following categories.
1) Subscription based
2) One time cost
3) Low to No Cost
Subscription Based Solutions
My top two contenders in this category are: GoToMyPC and LogMeIn
Out of the two I've used GoToMyPC the most. I've only used LogMeIn a short while.Both products are two-tiered and client server based in operation.
1) Work from either IE, Mozilla or Firefox
GoToMyPC: N/A LogMeIn: Yes
While LogMeIn works with browsers, GoToMyPC takes a slightly differentapproach. They load their own little application on your PC that takes about 30 secondsor so to download. Both worked great, I had no problems with performanceat all. Now if you're using Linux, you'll probably favor GoToMyPCsince you can use it with any Java enabled browser. While LogMeIn did work, it was a little quirky and sometimes thescreen was garbled. I was able to use it with Linux, but it was buggy.If you're using Linux, GoToMyPC will be a better fit for you.My Linux setup was Gentoo 2005 running KDE and using Firefox asmy browser. Another thing to note is that GoToMyPC will work with your Windows based PDA.
2) Work from multiple Operating Systems like Windows, Linux, etc. (Covered above.)
3) Easy to configure and setup Both were a snap to configure.I had both up and running in about 5 minutes or less.
4) Good Performance Other than the Linux issues withLogMeIn, they were both good. However, it seemed to me thatGoToMyPC was a little faster overall.
5) Good Security Features When I first looked at LogMeInthey did not have robust security, However, they they're pretty muchon par with GoToMyPC now. In this category they're fairly even.
6) Low Bandwidth and Resource Requirements
I've used both in Lan, Cable, DSL and dial-up situations anduntil you use dial-up both are about the same. However, with dial-up GoToMyPC has the performance edge.It could be that they're using some borrowed technology from Citrix which is their parent co. Citrix has a product calledMetaframe that I've used in the past. It only needs 20Kbs of bandwidth.GoToMyPC has been - continued below ...
