If you are into online software technologies, screen-sharing, remote control and do not get annoyed by learning a bit more about what is possible out there, you will be certainly interested in checking out a recent Slashdot post that covered the best VNC-based screen sharing tools.
"VNC is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures." More info here.
For everyone else VNC is an "open source" piece of software that allows two or more computers to be connected while allowing one to be the host and the others to be the clients. The host can share its screen, allowing remote users to see exactly what goes happens on that computer.
Having been released under a license that lets other developers and businesses further refine, modify and extend the basic VNC capabilities, a growing set of implementations has sprung up in the last few years, providing a colorful assortment of alternative low-cost solutions to cross-platform screen-sharing and remote control applications of all kinds.
In some implementations VNC can be used specifically for remote control of computers, which is very useful in many technical support, help desk, training and troubleshooting applications. In some other versions it can be used to do effective file transfers.
And in most cases this is software that works across different operating systems, allowing easy interconnection, screen and application sharing, remote control and file transfer between Macs, PCs and Linux boxes.
One such implementation, the commercial one done by Glance Networks, is an outstanding piece of software that can be used by anyone on a PC. Glance installs itself in the system tray, and with literally just one-click of the mouse can set your computer in "screen-sharing" mode. Once that is done, you can simply communicate your private Glance URL Web page (and access code) and anyone with a browser can load that page and see EXACTLY what goes on your screen.
It is pretty amazing the first you see it, and given enough bandwidth (anything above a 56K line) it has really some great potential uses.
If you haven't yet tried out Glance I strongly suggest you give it a good try (there is a free trial that you can test immediately).
If you explore deep enough inside the Glance Networks site you will also find this piece of information: "the Glance Networks, Inc., client software includes and executes a modified version of Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and passes messages to and from the modified VNC engine. The Glance-modified version of VNC source code may be freely downloaded here.
The original VNC software actually carries the following license:
"VNC is Copyright (C) AT&T Laboratories Cambridge.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; ..."
But back to the actual story. Slashdot and its wonderful community of
geeks, have really done an outstanding job of bringing together the best info, resources and user-originated advice about all of the different VNC implementations available out there.
This is a treasure of information, and like many other of the Slashdot user contributed collaborative reviews, it becomes a uniquely comprehensive report of the issue covered with nothing coming close to it in the technical publishing world.
The essence of the witty, rich and at times extremely technical comments can be arbitrarily blown down to:
RealVNC: the original.
TightVNC: optimized for low-bandwidth
Ultr@VNC: tons of extras - file transfer, chat, video driver, NT/AD security
TridiaVNC: get around firewalls, more management features
Win2VNC: One virtual desktop across two computers
and from the over 500 user contributed opinions, which you can access all on Slashdot, I have selected these few ultra-synthetic snippets:
"UltraVNC is miles ahead of the others when used with the video driver on Windows on a broadband or better connection.
It is smooth, very usable for most office applications.
Personally, I find file transfer to be useful too. The client side has some nice GUI touches for fullscreen mode - a little control bar that is very similar to the one in Remote Desktop.
On the other hand, RealVNC is the "gold standard".
If you're using VNC, you probably notice how slow it is.
UltraVNC/TightVNC is a big improvement over regular VNC ... but they're all dog slow."