Free Remote Access Tools For Windows and Mac Compared

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Keith Schultz provides an in-depth comparison of seven free remote access tools for Windows, four of which offer compatibility with the Mac. 'As you read about each tool, you'll notice that I put a lot of emphasis on remote printing. I rely on remote access tools on a daily basis, and in most cases I need to be able to print to my remote PC. For someone that just wants to check their home/office email account or view documents from outside the office, all of the utilities here will work fine. But for those trying to get some serious work done, remote printing may be the deal breaker.' Many of the free tools under review offer paid or licensed versions for access to additional features."

Comments

They're all free!

[ProdigyPuNk]

...Unless you want something besides a demo version.

Many of the free tools listed here also have paid versions that offer additional features (such as support for remote printing) or licensing (extra host computers or clients). For some users, the paid version will be the only true option.

...and I was getting all excited, too. TBH, I switched to Linux a few months ago and remote administration/printing/etc is one of the pluses. It's great to be at school, think "Uh-oh, forgot that term paper," and be able to grab it off the desktop at home.

Re:They're all free!

[je ne sais quoi]

The whole reason I use macs at work is that it's underpinnings are unix so I can use all those great tools that I use on linux at home and on my computing clusters on the mac. So, my remote computing solution is fuse, sshfs, fink and X11.app on the mac side, and ssh. Works like a charm. I even have konqueror installed on my desktop mac so I can have a remote gui file browser.

Re:They're all free!

[Sancho]

If you can make it work at home, you can make it work at work.
Plus you'll likely be more productive if you keep using the same environment all day.

If I have to spend a lot of time making something work, that's not productive. On my own time, I'm allowed to be unproductive. At work, if I'm spending time fiddling around making my OS run, I'm not doing real work.

Re:They're all free!

[T-Bone-T]

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection is free for all Windows and Apple users and is the full version. You don't even have to install it on Windows, it already is installed(provided you have the right versions of Windows).

lpr

[Hatta]

You shouldn't need any extra software to print remotely in OS X. Just cat a postscript file over SSH and into lpr on the remote machine.

Re:lpr

[CronoCloud]

It's even easier if the remote machine has CUPS setup so you can access the printer remotely via IPP. You can then just add the printer via whatever GUI frontend you want and print directly to it from your applications.

Teamviewer is the bane of the computer guy

[alen]

i used to tell my mom who lives 2000 miles away "i don't know" or "I need to be there"

now i can have desktop access to her laptop over the internet. and for free

RDP, NX vs VNC

[FrenZon]

I'd be interested to know how good these are at actually doing UI updates - I'm assuming they're all similar in implementation to VNC, which is a shame as you cannot really compare VNC-based systems to the speed of more integrated solutions like RDP and NX.

Remote Assistance/Remote Desktop

[gad_zuki!]

They're not free, but you already paid for them when you bought the OS. Granted, you'll need to set up the firewall rule beforehand, but they do everything you need. Control UAC, print, fast over slow connections, etc.

In a pinch, I use crossloop, which is nothing but hamachi+VNC in a neat little package.

Re:Remote Assistance/Remote Desktop

[CannonballHead]

In a pinch, I use crossloop, which is nothing but hamachi+VNC in a neat little package.

A lot of what people pay for are common/reachable/available tools "in a neat little package." :)

SSH X forwarding for Mac/Windows

[0racle]

Honestly, what I would really love to see would be something like SSH X forwarding to run a single remote app from a Mac or WIndows machine. I have a MacBook, it has a 13 inch screen. My Linux desktop at home has a much larger screen. I wish I could just forward individual Cocoa apps the same way you can run remote X apps over SSH and run them on the larger screen without having to hook the monitor, a keyboard and mouse to the Mac.

Re:SSH X forwarding for Mac/Windows

[bemymonkey]

I just use Remote Desktop... resizes windows for smaller-than-host screens automatically.

Now on a Mac, no idea...

UltraVNC - Single Click

[ka9dgx]

I highly recommend using UltraVNC-SC. You configure it for your needs as a support person. The person you support has to run a small single EXE file, and you then have control over their machine. Quick and efficient access to someone's desktop to see what they see has made a vast improvement in my ability to support people for the past 5 years or so.

Re:UltraVNC - Single Click

[ducomputergeek]

The only problem is that it's windows only. There is no UltraVNC SC for Mac/Linux users.

Also, if your dealing with a shop that has to be PCI-DSS or as part of a PA-DSS application, the PCI folks want to see at least 256bit AES encryption. The 128-bit solution isn't enough. So far the closest we've found is Logmein and we only support clients on Windows or OSX.

But we're looking at an NX based solution to deploy later this year or early next year which will allow us to do remote administration/maintenance for Windows, OSX, and Linux boxes.

Re:UltraVNC - Single Click

[speeDDemon (nw)]

I love UltraVNC-SC, however since vista (and now including win7) it has become less usable. I believe it has difficulty handling the '3D' desktop, specifically the UAC that causes the screen to darken.

There is support for Mac Remote Desktop

[www.sorehands.com]

They talk about RDP for Mac, but they are only talking about the client. There is a
beta version of Mac Remote Desktop that allows an RDP client to connect to a Mac.

It is called Mac Remote Desktop (surprised?) There is some information about it at http://www.aquaconnect.net/mac-remote-desktop.php

Aqua Connect also has a version for Mac Server, called Aqua Connect Terminal Server. More information is at http://www.aquaconnect.net/

Missing: Obvious Windows Remote Access Tools

[Nova Express]

This article seems to be missing some of the most common, well-known remote access tools for Windows:

• Storm
• Conficker
• GUMBLAR
• Renos
• etc.

These are just a few of the very common tools used to remotely access Windows systems every day!

SSH+RDP

[Spad]

I use a combination of copSSH, an excellent OpenSSH package for Windows, port forwarding and good old RDP (Because I don't really like the idea of publishing my RDP connection out on t'internet when I can use Public Key auth with SSH). Plus using SSH gives me SCP for file transfers, which is usually a bit faster than doing it via redirected drives in Windows.

The Windows 7/2008 R2 version of Remote Desktop (v7) has full support for multiple monitors (finally), Aero and for streaming audio and video via WMP so watching stuff is less of a slideshow (though still not really great with your average home broadband upload speeds) as well as local resource mapping (printers, drives, smartcards, etc).

"Screen Sharing" for the Mac

[Concerned Onlooker]

For those Mac users connecting to another Mac there is always the "Screen Sharing" app located at /System/Library/CoreServices/. It's already there. It's free.

Re:"Screen Sharing" for the Mac

[Dynedain]

For those Mac users connecting to another Mac there is always the "Screen Sharing" app located at /System/Library/CoreServices/. It's already there. It's free.

Not only that, but it's VNC based, so any VNC client can connect to a Mac that has screensharing enabled, and you can use it to connect to any VNC server.

Oh, and you don't have to dig into the library to find it either.... from the Finder, do connect to server, and give it a vnc url, vnc://machine.example.com

Re:Very Deep Evaluation

[Dynedain]

That's why I setup my mother with iChat. She can initialize a remote desktop sharing without needing to modify any settings or her or my router, and neither of us needs to worry about dynamic IP addresses.

Re:Very Deep Evaluation

[beakerMeep]

Who cares about security if you can remote print? Doesn't everyone consider printing to a location they aren't at a top priority?

I know when I need a document on paper, and I need it now, I print to somewhere else.

Speed is the deal-breaker

[h00manist]

The only things I have used that had reasonable speed for real work were RDP, Citrix, and LTSP. I used vnc, tightvnc and ultravnc many times, but never found it to be usable for day-to-day stuff.

Re:Speed is the deal-breaker

[StuartHankins]

The only things I have used that had reasonable speed for real work were RDP, Citrix, and LTSP.

For GUI work, yes you have it nailed. But it depends on your needs I guess. Most of my work can be done via ssh, so PuTTY works great for my tasks. I use TouchTerm on my iPhone to check on things during meetings as needed... it makes quite an impression when they ask how many parts or customers we have or how much in sales over some period for some group of items and I just login and check instead of getting back to them later.

I'm not against using a GUI, but most of my work is SQL or bash scripting or shell commands or whatever, and text works just fine for that.

SSH Dynamic forward is your friend.

[domatic]

Rather than forward all sorts of ports to different hosts behind a firewall you just need an ssh server that can connect to those hosts and all connections to that (properly secured) ssh server.

On the client you do something like putty -D 1080 username@host. This creates a SOCKS 5 proxy on the client that can connect to anything the ssh server you've connected to can see. On Linux and (maybe) OS X, you use run your remote client through proxychains or tsocks eg.

proxychains rdesktop internal_ip
proxychains ssvncviewer -bgr233 -encodings tight other_internal_ip

Bandwidth allowing, you can connect to as many remote clients as you like at the same time. Seems "firewall friendly" to me.This is sometimes called "socksification". You can also use "localhost" in software like browsers that can be set to use SOCKS.

Windows users don't have quite as easy a time socksifying appsthough you can try FreeCap or SocksCap. I don't have to do much in the way of remote printing though I suppose print clients could be tunneled that way as well.