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Actually these guys are very close to having one that works like that, and I'm pretty sure they are not Microsoft.

You can share single application windows with VNC. rdesktop has potential to support that if it doesn't already. But that's the beauty of X11, network transparency is built into the protocol.

Giving them a happy blue box that blinks and costs $50 trumps any ability to ssh into it and fix. . . .

And I'm not getting calls during the weekend when a power outage fries the hard drive and I have to rebuild the Linux partition.

I think you're trolling a wee bit here.

First, the ability to ssh into a machine and fix things is not dependent upon choice of OS, because you can ssh into a Windoze box and fix it. If you want to see the user's desktop, use Desktop Sharing or whatever it's called on XP, with rdesktop (Free Linux client), or try VNC.

Second, it's silly to pretend Linux is more vulnerable to filesystem corruption than 'Doze. If it's a machine with unreliable power (or unreliable users), then use a journalling filesystem.

You're in the wrong place if you think you're going to convince anyone that Linux is truly more difficult or costly to support than 'Doze, especially now, when the true cost of its piss-poor security model is finally becoming apparent even to non-technical end users.

From the article:

After chatting with Caesar (who also helped test the airpanel), we agreed that this device is really a "glimpse of the future". We imagine that one day we will not need to be right in front of a computer just to control our other computers. We will be able to travel anywhere in a modern city and use an independent, portable device (cell phone, PDA, tablet PC, airpanel, etc.) to access or control the PC sitting at home. Will such a day ever arrive? Who's to say? But the airpanel does seem kind of futuristic.

Such a day came for me a long time ago, when I started running a TightVNC server on my desktop. I can access it on my laptop. I can access it on my PDA (a little cumbersome on my iPaq's 320x240 screen, though). And, here's the best part, I can access it anywhere, through any java-enabled web browser.

VNC, on my home network, is extremely zippy (as in watching DVDs is no problem zippy), and is even entirely useful for web browsing and document editing from far across the Internet. The TightVNC enhancements (integrated JPEG compression, etc.) also make a big difference in maximizing the intelligent use of available bandwidth which, judging by the article, Microsoft's RDC definitely does not. There is, however, one caveat: no integrated audio support. For that, I suppose you'll have to look at the network transparency feature in arts.

From the article:

After chatting with Caesar (who also helped test the airpanel), we agreed that this device is really a "glimpse of the future". We imagine that one day we will not need to be right in front of a computer just to control our other computers. We will be able to travel anywhere in a modern city and use an independent, portable device (cell phone, PDA, tablet PC, airpanel, etc.) to access or control the PC sitting at home. Will such a day ever arrive? Who's to say? But the airpanel does seem kind of futuristic.

Such a day came for me a long time ago, when I started running a TightVNC server on my desktop. I can access it on my laptop. I can access it on my PDA (a little cumbersome on my iPaq's 320x240 screen, though). And, here's the best part, I can access it anywhere, through any java-enabled web browser.

VNC, on my home network, is extremely zippy (as in watching DVDs is no problem zippy), and is even entirely useful for web browsing and document editing from far across the Internet. The TightVNC enhancements (integrated JPEG compression, etc.) also make a big difference in maximizing the intelligent use of available bandwidth which, judging by the article, Microsoft's RDC definitely does not. There is, however, one caveat: no integrated audio support. For that, I suppose you'll have to look at the network transparency feature in arts.

I'm 17. Here's what I would do. I mean, I used to have a porn problem, and it ended up making me just feel guilty all the time. I wished that I had never started.
That said, here were some things, from my point of view, that would have prevented me.
Keep the door open, and face the computer to the door. Thats good. Don't put a lock on the door, make sure they keep it open. Initiate corrections for door closure.
Network your house and install a VNC server on their computers. Tell them you can see their screen, and demonstrate it for them. If you want to get better, get one that they use at schools that are harder to remove. LANSchool comes to mind.
Install driftnet on a computer you own, set it up so it saves and records all images passing through the network. You can set the limit of downloaded images to be pretty small, but its the fear factor we're after. Explain to them you see, and record all graphics that get transfered over the net.
If you have a firewall, log dns requests, explain that to them too.
With the exception of the VNC server, this setup lets them have total administrative control of their computer. They can install windows, linux, or use a mac, and you still know what domain names or pictures they access, which is enough. If they know you can, then they won't do things they're not supposed too.

Thats my $0.02

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

It's funny; today someone at work knew I had a Mac and was asking me about it. He's thinking of getting a new machine and so he's pondering a Mac this time around. He asked me if he could connect to work (via VPN) the same way he does from Windows. I happily told him yes he can especially now that Mac OS X natively supports VPN, and he can also use VNC and even a WTS client. Not only can he do everything he could do with his old Windows box, he can have a decent terminal to work with (cmd.exe sucks) and has all the perks of running UNIX (running remote X sessions, ssh, etc). He said one of the main reasons he was pondering a Mac was for its multimedia capabilities (Apple SuperDrive DVD Burner, iMovie, iPhoto, etc). He looks pretty convinved now that he knows all the tools are out there on the Mac for work as well as play.

VNC works just fine in a windowswindows configuration. TightVNC compresses vnc pretty well. Remember to keep the color depth down as that can have huge impacts on performance over low bandwidth.

I highly recommend Tight VNC for all of your VNC needs. It's based on the ATT version, is free, open source, and has a lot of nice improvements.

...could actually be a combination of these three things:
1. An latop with the display you need (15" UXGA, etc, etc) - $2000?
CPU, Disk and RAM don't matter.
2. A small Compaq Evo e-PC with the computing power you need. - $683.00 onwards
(P4 CPU, DDR, 2 GB RAM - you can upgrade the disk).
The form factor is pretty small: 10"x10"x3.5" + a small power brick
3. A VNC server (eg: TightVNC) on your "server"
and a VNC client on your laptop. Run the client full screen.
You can also use Windows' built in terminal server if you're runing Microsoft.

Plus you'd need some network connectivity (Wifi/Bluetooth/crossover cable) between your client and your server.

This is a client/server setup at a (comparatively) cheap price, small enough for hand luggage (airport security won't hassle you if you checked the "server" in and carried your laptop in hand baggage). Plus you can use your laptop on the flight.

If you hookup a second monitor to your "server"in the field, you can also use x2vnc (Linux) or Win2VNC (windows) to obtain a single dual-head "desktop". These programs allow you to use two screens on your two different computers as if they were connected to the same computer (single mouse and keyboard controls both and "jumps" at the screen border) You can also cut and paste between computers. Even if one is running Windows, and the other is running Linux. It's great - I use it at work in my "dual-head" XP/Linux setup.;-)

Netmeeting? My god man, get yourself a real remote desktop utility. :-)

VNC is already split into the original distribution from ORL (now RealVNC, TightVNC from Constantin & friends, eSVNC, which added security and file transfers (though win only) and a bunch of Pocket PC, Palm, MacOS, OS X etc. forks.

VNC is such a wonderful und useful program and I sometimes dream of how much better, securer and faster it could be.

Plaese combine your efforts. The world will thank you.

bye egghat.

XFree86 for Win32 in general isn't terribly stable yet, but it works pretty good. It only runs in a window, so it doesn't really integrate seemlessly with the Windows GUI the way eXceed in passive mode does (where each client window can pop up separately using your Windows "window manager").

We have eXceed 3D (GLX), but I haven't gotten it to work well. It is dirt slow running the GL Xscreensaver hacks, but I probably need to recompile using the eXceed libs if I can figure out how to do that... I haven't had a lot of luck running GLX apps over the network either, probably because most of my GL apps are statically linked or something :/ .

My favourite solution for accessing UNIX desktops from a PC remains VNC, though.

Cygwin is just about mature enough to make Win32 a viable *NIX platform. The biggest thing missing is just decent file access (it's currently very, very slow, because they have to open every file in a directory just to get check for hidden UNIX-style attributes I guess.) Once this is handled better, as well as maybe some security issues, you'll pretty much have a decent POSIX environment.

Let's hope Wine does a good job catching up from the other end! ;)

It can't die. It may not be as well-supported, but there are several other projects working on the "platform" (notably TightVnc. I hope it isn't in some kind of freakish licensing where they go out of business in a fire sale, get bought by NA (remotely possible) or Symantec(pcanywhere) and locked away forever.

I use PCAnywhere a lot for managing machines over a VPN, and I would kill myself if I had to use a system like this to do what this person is talking about. Unless you're running the PCAnywhere (or VNC) server on a really fast machine, and your network connection is at least 10base-T, you're going to hate working through this because of the lag-time in the UI.

Try TightVNC, which is TridiaVNC plus JPEG compression and "Tight" compression, minus the support and fee structure of the commerical TridaVNC (TridiaVNC does have a free, non supported version). Claims are of > 25% improvement over VNC's Zlib encoding.

I've found that it works reasonably well over broadband with highest compression, though the JPEG compression takes a toll on CPU and image quality at the highest levels. 10base-T is just about like being there, and dial-up is usable for short periods of time. Anything more, and you'll want to just jump in the car though.

To be honest, for managing Windows 2000 servers, I usually use the MS Terminal Services Advanced Client. It's accessible through a web browser and is pretty responsive over dial-up or broadband. When I need access to the actual desktop session (Term Services satrts a new session on the server) to see error messages or such, I use VNC-X, which is an ActiveX VNC client. I simply add it to the same page that I launch TSAC from and have 1-click access to any server through either VNC or TSAC. (Hey, maybe I should patent that!)

I use PCAnywhere a lot for managing machines over a VPN, and I would kill myself if I had to use a system like this to do what this person is talking about. Unless you're running the PCAnywhere (or VNC) server on a really fast machine, and your network connection is at least 10base-T, you're going to hate working through this because of the lag-time in the UI.

Try TightVNC, which is TridiaVNC plus JPEG compression and "Tight" compression, minus the support and fee structure of the commerical TridaVNC (TridiaVNC does have a free, non supported version). Claims are of > 25% improvement over VNC's Zlib encoding.

I've found that it works reasonably well over broadband with highest compression, though the JPEG compression takes a toll on CPU and image quality at the highest levels. 10base-T is just about like being there, and dial-up is usable for short periods of time. Anything more, and you'll want to just jump in the car though.

To be honest, for managing Windows 2000 servers, I usually use the MS Terminal Services Advanced Client. It's accessible through a web browser and is pretty responsive over dial-up or broadband. When I need access to the actual desktop session (Term Services satrts a new session on the server) to see error messages or such, I use VNC-X, which is an ActiveX VNC client. I simply add it to the same page that I launch TSAC from and have 1-click access to any server through either VNC or TSAC. (Hey, maybe I should patent that!)

i've been using tightVNC at work for a few months now and find it extremely useful. i've also been running it on XP boxes, so that the helpdesk jockeys can access an XP box from their workstation (which is running win2K) in order to duplicate/solve a clients problem. cheers

I'm using the tightvnc distribution of VNC on WinNT (and linux as well) and I'm not seeing nearly the cpu usage that you are... when its active, there's a bit of a jump, but inactive my cpu (on a three-monitor system, no less--600mhz P3 with 128 MB RAM. With the Tight compression selected, 8 bit color, and jpeg compression enabled, its very usable even over a modem. The only real advantages PC Anywhere has over it in our office is the built-in file transfer capabilities of PCanywhere, and the ability to dial directly into a computer. aside from that, VNC has it beat, as far as I'm concerned.

I suspect that one can probably get close to RDP or ICA performance with careful tuning of the VNC protocol. TightVNC is an attempt to do that.

What would VNC need to become even faster? I think VNC right now has no provisions for drawing commands at all. Extending the protocol to add a few drawing commands might help; servers could generate them if they have the information to do it. For example, a simple BitBlt operation would make scrolling much faster. Maybe a clear or interpolated area fill could also help.

One can also push compression quite a bit farther.

Another trick that might make VNC appear faster is a multi-window frontend. That way, you don't have to wait for the background to fill in, and small windows have only little overhead.

I have had better luck with TightVNC; it compresses a bit better, but I think the main advantage is that it requires less computation per tile. I use it regularly over 256kbaud Internet connections with no problems, but it seems more responsive even for local and LAN VNC connections.