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WinVNC vs. KVM Extender?
systmc asks: "I'm trying to decide between using WinVNC or a KVM extender at a customer's site. I'd like to use WinVNC but I'm concerned about it's CPU usage on a WinNT system (with an inactive client connected CPU usage was at around 8%, even with Raw encoding. PCAnywhere was about 0.5%). Does anyone have experience tweaking VNC? If hardware winds up being necessary, what KVM Extender would you recommend?"
Have you tried TightVNC? I don't know about it's CPU usage, but IMHO it is much better and faster than normal WinVNC. It can also do JPEG-encoding on the picture data, so it is really bandwidth-efficient.
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
You haven't explained why you want to use a remote machine.
If it's to run applications, then the WinVNC/PCAnywhere/etc route is a good one. It's more flexible, because you don't need a cable. You can share the machine between more than one person, and you don't need extra hardware.
Personally, for remote administration, I'd always use the KVM extender solution. If the machine that you're administrating isn't behaving, then the remote control software probably isn't working properly either. Remote software doesn't let you watch bootup screens, or reconfigure the Bios.
So, before you make a decision, I think you need to look carefully at the purpose of the solution.
Somebody mentioned the trouble with VNC for remote administration, if the PC isn't working then VNC may not be up either. KVM's don't suffer from this. But they're distance limited. Compaq makes a product that gives the best of both worlds. It's a PCI card for the "controlled" PC. It hooks into the video, keyboard, mouse, and power. It has it's own power supply and NIC in it. It gives you a KVM-like control over TCP/IP. You control it via java and a web browser. A company I used to work for deployed these in several hundred servers that were located all over the U.S. It got us out of jams where VNC or a KVM would not.