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Hey everyone!

I’m looking after an environment made up of 7 locations (7 different subnets all connected via VPN and 10MB connections).

Currently we’re using VNC for remote support of our clients, however this is flakey and unstable at best. We’re looking at a better solution to reduce the amount of visits required to these locations. Currently none of our workstations have Intel vPro, however all new ones I’m considering purchasing will.

I’ve looked briefly at NetSupport, however I’m sure there’s something better out there.

Thanks!~

6 Spice ups
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I have been using Bomgar for a couple months and it has worked very well.

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What problems are you having with VNC (and what flavour of VNC are you using)? I have used it at pretty much every network I’ve ever come across and never had any real problems…

Also, what is your budget for a new remote support app?

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Logmein. Free version is truely free for commercial use.

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+1 for logmein.

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Logmein, yes…but purchase Logmein Central in addition to it (it was around $273 per year). Makes deployment MUCH easier.

I also have to ask, what’s going on with VNC?

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I use VNC and haven’t had any issues. I like UltraVNC specifically because it offers a few more options. Can’t beat free. I’ve also used the WebEx product which works well but costs. Have also used LiveMeeting for remote support but it’s more complicated than VNC because you have to count on the user to establish a connection and give control.

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We’ve been using the latest version of UltraVNC (1.0.8), we’ve found the performance isn’t as good as RDP, also we constantly run into probs with Windows 7 (for example when we’re at the press ctrl+alt+del logon on screen we can’t sent the ctrl+alt+del keys successfully like we can on windows xp, etc).

We haven’t really looked at establishing a budget for this as of yet, however if I presented to management a solution that would substantially reduce the amount my helpdesk guys spend on vehicle costs they’d certainly consider it.

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Remote Assistance also works pretty well. What’s the OS mix? Windows 7 and XP? Overall, I’d lean toward Logmein.

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Real Binette wrote:

We’ve been using the latest version of UltraVNC (1.0.8), we’ve found the performance isn’t as good as RDP,

To be honest I think you will find that with the vast majority of remote support tools. Some of the web based ones like LogMeIn seem to perform a bit better in very low bandwidth situations but generally I find RDP to be a much better experience than any ‘screen capture’ style remote support app.

People often mention LogMeIn for use in these situations but to be honest I have always thought of LogMeIn as a good tool for accessing remote users that are not connected to your network and not really as a tool for connecting to users that are actually on your LAN / WAN. I mean for a start, dont you have to browse and log in to a web page before you can even see a list of the PCs that you want to connect to? That seems very sluggish compared to the 5 seconds it takes me to launch VNC…

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Exactly. I just want to reach out and connect to someone’s pc, without having to have someone browse to some web page, etc.

Since I posted this question I’ve done some googling and found an app called ‘Boztek VENM console’ that seems to add a ton of features to VNC. Only thing it doesn’t let me control any of the vPro or intel advanced management features I was kind of hoping for.

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There’s benefits to either solution. Logmein’s is much more elegant with consolidated management. If you go for the ‘Central’ piece, you can easily group your computers in addition to set up other administrators.

Also, deploying to remote users is a cinch, since you can send deployment urls - and deploy internally via GPO w/an MSI.

There is the added benefit of being able to support your users when you are not on site is a plus (or minus, depending on how you think about it).

You can’t beat UltraVNC’s features for free, though. Logmein Free does not have half the capabilities as UltraVNC when it comes to session management.

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We’ve been using UltraVNC with the few Windows 7 machines we have and haven’t had any issues.

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Real Binette wrote:

. Only thing it doesn’t let me control any of the vPro or intel advanced management features I was kind of hoping for.

What exactly are these features and dont Intel provide any software to manage them?

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I used RDP , Boztec and Ultra VNC. Ultra VNC is the best of the bunch.

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VNC has some add-ons like VNC Neighborhood and VNC Manager and some others

http://www.sysworksoft.net/products/

Radmin is the only other one that is close to having allot of features for saving profiles etc…

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A nice management tool for UltraVNC is Skeep (although I’ve not used it that much).

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Another vote for LogMeIn Free. It’s awesome, powerful and totally free.

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VNC requires you to open ports (unless the newer versions don’t) while LogMeIn works over port 80 so no need to mess around with the firewalls. I started also using Teamviewer for the odd computers that I support which I haven’t installed LogMeIn yet. I use RDP mostly for the servers that I manage.

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