I’d use Remote Desktop if you have a fixed IP (or don’t mind rigging up a system to inform you of the current dynamic IP of your home machine if it changes a lot) and your host OS supports RDP remoting (some versions of Windows don’t support outgoing RDP connections unless you hack a DLL, primarily this is an issue with Home versions, but Business/Pro versions work both ways just fine), or if Remote Desktop doesn’t work for you, just download Windows Live Mesh to both systems as it has remote desktop functionality built in and super-cool file syncing too. Assuming the iPhone App thing isn’t a big draw for you, either of these two options will cover everything you want to do while being absolutely free and super fast and well integrated into the OS.
RDP is slow as molasses.
You must be doing it wrong, or confusing it with VNC. RDP is super-fast.
Dude, I use it all the time, and I use logmein every day. Logmein is way faster.
RDP is wicked fast. I use a terminal server to provide remote desktops for lots of users. Not certain of your issues.
Are there other options for the iPhone other than logmein? Can’t bring myself to pay $30 for the iPhone app without trying out a demo first.
Remote Desktop is usually fast enough for me, but I have noticed cases where it slows to a crawl for no apparent reason. It’s always with certain apps, so they’re probably misbehaving in some way like generating way too many repaints of areas that don’t actually change, or something like that, and RDP dutifully passes them all along.
You can use WinAdmin on the iPhone to do RDP. It’s $12. I think there are some other ones too.
I like logmein too, but your experience directly contradicts mine. You can manage some of the RDP settings to speed up some things like what gets brought over including bitdepth, but even ignoring that I find it faster than Logmein.
I bother to setup RDP when it’s something I am consistently accessing that has a fixed ip, otherwise Logmein is almost as fast, and much easier to keep working.
I found one called Mocha VNC Lite, it’s free. That’s probably good enough to see if Edge network is fast enough for remote desktop (probably not).
VNC is not the same as RDP though the two protocols have similar goals.
VNC (even the various optimized versions of it) connections are so slow I can’t stand to use them even on a local wired LAN.
Forgot to mention Dameware. Not sure how it measures up today but at one time it was the best option, especially in corporate support environments.
logmein is awesome, but does it allow you to hear audio from the remote controlled pc? is there a setting i’m missing?
You need the Pro (i.e., non-free) version if you want audio via logmein. If you absolutely need it for free, the standard Windows Terminal Services client can do audio.
thanks! the amount i use logmein, i might as well pay for the pro version.
I used a Logme trial in a couple of weeks ago and loved it, but was turned off by their pricing. It’s pretty much all friends and family in my case, so I’m not interested in spending much on such services. They contacted me today and offered me a $10 per session rate (each session generated is active for 24 hours to the same PC), which is an attractive option. I never know how much support I’ll be doing in a given month, but it’s usually a pretty low number of incidents.
I was about to pull the trigger on it, when I came across Copilot (copilot.com). Anyone know how the two actually compare?
is there any way to adjust audio quality when using remote desktop connection in windows? i don’t see the option anywhere, and streaming audio to a remote pc is not constant at all.
Might have to look into this. IT at work has banned TeamViewer for Reasons, and the new router TimeWarner has saddled me with apparently has a well known bug with opening ports, so the (slow, jerky, shitty) UltraVNC I was briefly using is right out. Any chance this thing works without opening ports? Eh, I’ll just go read, I guess. . .
. . . LAZINESS
Will NoMachine.com work for me if I wanna log into my PC at home from my Mac at work? I keep finding more reasons to need that…