Ask Slashdot: Best App For Android For Remote Access To Mac Or PC? 165
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?"
Files... Not Allowed to Take? (Score:5, Insightful)
I need it to work on files I am not allowed to take out when leaving.
Are your bosses going to be cool with you transmitting all that data over innumerable, unsecured pipes they have no control over? Because if they don't want you sneaker-netting the stuff out...
HR will have that pink slip ready for ya. (Score:5, Insightful)
> out when leaving
Where I used to work, this is grounds for immediate termination. I'm sure there's a reason you can't take those files home in a portable/flash drive (trade secrets, etc) and you want us to help you cirumvent that restriction?
Re:Team Viewer (Score:5, Insightful)
Facist
Fascist is but one of the duties of a parent who actually cares about his children's upbringing. Obviously, a duty your parents failed to fulfill.
Shame, that.
Splashtop does a fine job. (Score:3, Insightful)
Splashtop works, but isn't free. I do find it is smoother and less buggy feeling than the free VNCs. There's supposed to be a google chrome RDP plugin too, but I've not played with that yet.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
TeamViewer has issues you should be aware of.
A friend showed me how easy it was to use, and we decided to give it a try at our shop, where we do computer sales and service. Being able to do remote support would be very useful, we have several customers that live a good distance away from us and that occasionally need to schedule us to come out and help them, and this would allow us to help them at significantly lower rates.
We set up team viewer 6 (iirc) and bought one license. Come to find out that it could only be installed on one physical computer. We were used to remote apps that only allow one simultaneous USE at a time, and that's all we needed. Too bad the GM installed it on his computer before we could stop him. So now we have to go into his office to do remote support. (or HE has to do it)
I discussed this with teamveiwer and they basically told me to buy another seat or get lost. More on principle than cost I think, we continued to use it from that machine. They have a nice tool to create a wrapped installer that you put on your web site and your customers just click to download. It installs, and immediately launches, configures, and connects to us. I must admit that's slick. Too bad it only connected to the GM's computer.
So more frequently lately I just connect from my computer to the customer the more manual way. It pops up a "for non commercial use only" note on launch but hey we already paid for our license and I'm the only using it so whatever, it works fine. We never use more than one instance at a time, so as far as I see it, we're playing fair, we paid for one instance and are using one instance,
I had been seeing an update notice for teamviewer and I made the [i]mistake[/i] of running it and it upgraded me to version 7. Now it disconnects me after 15 minutes. Back to 6 I guess. Finally found the old app in a backup and reinstalled it. Nope! They "upgraded" my account online and now I can't use teamviewer 6 anymore. Bastards. I really hate it when computer software actively fights me trying to get my job done. (6 is compatible with 7, the only difference apparently is the timeout they added, so don't be a fool and "upgrade") So they're not on my Good List anymore. I have to pay twice to use once, and they absolutely do NOT care to work with me on it. Greed wins over customer service with them, unfortunately.
I hate to see that happen with good products. Alsoft DiskWarrior is the same way, incredibly useful product, horrible customer service.