Free Remote Access Tools For Windows and Mac Compared 152
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."
They're all free! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:SSH X forwarding for Mac/Windows (Score:2, Informative)
X forwarding over SSH is extremely slow.
ssh + tightVNC, or ssh + RDP (Score:0, Informative)
Re:SSH X forwarding for Mac/Windows (Score:3, Informative)
I just use Remote Desktop... resizes windows for smaller-than-host screens automatically.
Now on a Mac, no idea...
SSH+RDP (Score:3, Informative)
I use a combination of copSSH [itefix.no], 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 (Score:4, Informative)
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:There is support for Mac Remote Desktop (Score:2, Informative)
Or you can go into system preferences>sharing>screen sharing and use VNC. It's built in. Hell, you can do it through iChat. And then you have Apple Remote Desktop which allows for some more advanced options and it's $500 to support an unlimited number of macs.
We've been exploring this for a while, but we have to make sure any solutions meet PCI-DSS and PA-DSS compliance. That really leaves us with Logmein as the only way to support both Windows and Mac clients behind a firewall on our budget.
Re:They're all free! (Score:4, Informative)
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:Very Deep Evaluation (Score:3, Informative)
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:"Screen Sharing" for the Mac (Score:3, Informative)
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:UltraVNC - Single Click (Score:4, Informative)
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:lpr (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:UltraVNC - Single Click (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They're all free! (Score:4, Informative)
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).
SSH Dynamic forward is your friend. (Score:2, Informative)
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.