Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Best App For Android For Remote Access To Mac Or PC?

Posted by timothy on from the not-gonna-have-to-ask-you-to-come-in-on-saturday dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Hi, I need to get remote access to my home Mac and Windows PC. At home, it's basically for watching TV, whereas at the office, I need it to work on files I am not allowed to take out when leaving. I know there's a lot of choice out there, but I need something free and reliable. What do you all recommend?"

3 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Team Viewer by alta · · Score: 4, Informative

    I use teamviewer. Free for personal use. Does what you need.

    Drive my kids nuts when they're on the computer and Daddy randomly connect to see what the heck they're doing. Keeps them on their toes and off questionable sites. With the help of opendns... I'll eventually put in a proxy when they get older though. Preserving what innocence I can...

    --
    Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
  2. RDP by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft's built-in remote display technology.

    The best RDP client for Android is Remote RDP

    For the MAC, you could install xrdp which provides the same protocol to access linux/osx.

    RDP is a very lightweight protocol, originally created by Citrix way back and bought or licenced by Microsoft, as they do with the bits of Windows that are any good.

    1. Re:RDP by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Microsoft's new RDP client is pretty fantastic. They bought out some company that made a cross-platform RDP client: I've tried both the OS X version and the iOS version (primarily on my iPhone, but also on my iPad), and overall it's worked extremely well. Better than the Windows client, dare I say. It's also available on Android.

      Two big advantages for me on the iPhone: it's very fast (and seems to support some sort of progressive image compression that leads to low latency for getting something up on screen but still high quality as it loads in higher res imagery after) and has a very nice trackpad-like control option. For that mode, you basically can use the screen of the phone as if it were a touchpad, moving around a cursor. This works far better than the usual method most RDP clients use where you just tap on the screen where you want it to click. That's super inaccurate on a phone, while the trackpad style lets you be sure of where you're clicking.

      I don't want to say that there aren't other clients supporting all this stuff, just that I've tried Microsoft's new clients and they work pretty darned well.