Remote Control Software thread version 5151941

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Langly

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 23, 2002
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So we are at an impasse here at work. We are trying to decide on remote software for our clients that will be all over the states and in canada.

We have been trying a few things but meh nones worked out.

Crossloop: Is cheap, but sucks. Also a pain to deal with when there are firewalls involved.

Webex: its ok but we are still on the fence

Landesk: too much overhead for what we need.


Heres what we are looking for:

Something that doesn't need to be installed on client computers all the time, so they can go to a webpage and download something and connect with us

Fair priced - The cheap route really is... cheap. We are willing to pay for a good product

Low overhead - We don't really want anything that we will need to setup our own servers for at this time.

Firewall friendly - We need something that will work behind a firewall with minimal configuration changes to the firewalls access lists and other items.

Anyone got any suggestions for products we can try? I know this is a somewhat common question but I just want to get the [h]ordes input and maybe try some lesser known products out.

Thanks guys!
 
Langly said:
Something that doesn't need to be installed on client computers all the time, so they can go to a webpage and download something and connect with us
Click to expand...

The helpdesk I work for uses LogMeIn Rescue. You have them go to logmein123.com or support.me, give them a code, and they can download the remote client, no local admin necessary unless you want to run it as a System Service. After you're done, they close the client and it's gone.

Might be too expensive for what you need, though.
 
I don't recall having any issues with LogMeIn or Crossloop. I even checked with our network admin, and he didn't have to setup any special rules in the Cisco firewall for Crossloop -- it simply worked.
 
PTNL said:
I don't recall having any issues with LogMeIn or Crossloop. I even checked with our network admin, and he didn't have to setup any special rules in the Cisco firewall for Crossloop -- it simply worked.
Click to expand...

We don't use a Cisco firewall here, we use a few layers of other programs which works out well.

We used crossloop on 90+ remote machines and it just didnt work right 90% of the time. It was slow, never updated or listed computers properly and overall was just a bad product. Its cheap and that was the only +
 
Logmein works well, but can be pretty slow sometimes. But it works.

Based on your criteria, I'd have to recommend TeamViewer. I've been toying with the free portable version, and like Logmein it punches right through firewalls. The party on the other end launches the software and you can't connect until they read you the session ID and passcode (or vice versa). There are paid versions available for commercial use that likely have more features.

I'm positive there are a plethora of other remote support solutions available, but these are the only ones I have recent experience with (aside from VNC which I use on LANs).

Check out this thread for a ton of other options.
 
Check out GoToMeeting too. In a corporate environment, that and WebEx good choices, but I believe both come with a hefty price tag.
 
We are gonna check out GoToMeeting this next week and price things out. We really liked loginmein rescue. It lets you do remote control of blackberries... which was AWESOME. We support a lot of guys on BB's which would make our life easier.

I appreciate the contributions to this thread. I'll let ya'all know what we decide and why. And I'll post some thoughts on why we didn't choose a particular vendor. Hopefully help someone else out too
 
Langly said:
I'll let ya'all know what we decide and why. And I'll post some thoughts on why we didn't choose a particular vendor.
Click to expand...
Much appreciated. I look forward to seeing how this turned out for you.
 
So heres the final verdict: We went with Logmein Rescue.

The reason we went with it is because it worked flawlessly through our firewall without any configuration changes. It has a great UI and its un-attended sessions were awesome. The thing that sealed the deal was the Blackberry and phone support. We have over 500 Blackberries right now and you can remote control a blackberry using this program. We are going to be loading the logmein program via our BES and force it across to everyone so we can t/s better.

2nd runner up: Webex. Cisco has a solid product with Webex. It was priced right (a bit cheaper for us than logmein rescue) and its a good platform. The reason we didn't go webex was because of the unattended access and the lack of phone support. Whats interesting enough, is that RIM uses Webex for their Blackberry support and they had no clue Logmein Rescue actually lets you remote control the blackberries :D

Last place: Gotomeeting. We didn't like this one at all. Price was meh, UI just didn't suit my boss. Wasn't as fast and crisp as the other two. It got cut off the chopping block really fast. To be honest, we could of given it another shot and played more but we narrowed it down to the above two remote login programs and decided those were better.
 
Langly said:
So heres the final verdict: We went with Logmein Rescue.

The reason we went with it is because it worked flawlessly through our firewall without any configuration changes. It has a great UI and its un-attended sessions were awesome. The thing that sealed the deal was the Blackberry and phone support. We have over 500 Blackberries right now and you can remote control a blackberry using this program. We are going to be loading the logmein program via our BES and force it across to everyone so we can t/s better.
Click to expand...

Good stuff. I'm very happy using LMI:R for my helpdesk job.
Only major problem that I've had with it is that sometimes when you are running LMI as a service, and have the PC reboot or just log out, and you go to log back in, you'll get the LMI window pop up and the user's background image... but explorer.exe fails you run. You have to manually execute it from TaskManager. Not sure why this happens, but it occurs 1 in 10 times or so.
 
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