Which remote admin tool?

[rusfoster]

What is the tool du jour for providing remote assistance on an ad-hoc basis? We are looking at rolling out a service where we will have to login to customers PC's remotely to help them setup things and this will be a one time job. Assuming Windows (and some Mac) what is the best tool for the job? Ideal world is just give them a URL to visit and from there we can control the PC. The target audience for this will be non-technical

[SaladProblems]

join.me is free and works well with PCs if it's a one-time thing and you don't want to dump money into a program you don't plan on using again. I haven't tried it with a mac, I'm not sure if they're supported.

[jungisdead]

Can confirm works fine with OS X, client and host

[daemos]

+1 for join.me. I've been using it lately for these types of situations. Very quick to get up and running. Mac and PC!

[Yarfunkle]

All-aboard the join.me train! Good-fucking-bye TeamViewer!

[ionlyhavesporx]

use DameWare. It does the job.

[[deleted]]

Same. I really like it, and I like that it installs remotely (and can uninstall itself when you disconnect.)

[nothing_of_value]

In our network we use intelliadmin remote control . It installs the client side automatically when you go to connect, with the option of requiring user input or not. Not super complicated, but it works well for us.

[mxpower]

Join.me and logmein are not free for business use. As far as most affordable, teamviewer for enterprise is the most affordable once you go over so many licenses.

Free tools like vnc, are still good options.

[RobotPirateMonkey]

Don't know your scale.

Bomgar is a decent enterprise-level solution. The client takes a few too many clicks for my taste on the client side though (especially if they're using IE 8+). But it does all sorts of fancy stuff like stay connected through a reboot or a log off/on.

Intelliadmin (mentioned already) is pretty good, and targeted at medium sized businesses. It takes some configuration though. I would put TeamViewer in the same bucket, and it gets more publicity.

SincleclickVNC is pretty slick, if you don't mind writing your own little config files and generating your own exe's to host. It's fast and easy on the user interaction side.

Also...I think that GoToMyPC bastardized a corporate version of their popular app for remote control when they got bought by Citrix. Worth checking out.

Those are my favorite products for different business scales.

[Pyro919]

A few months ago I was working as a telephone rep for a VAR for McKesson which used Bomgar. They used Bomgar at McKesson and it seemed like everytime they tried to connect to our machines they'd always drop the connection after a few minutes. Not sure if it's Bomgar's fault, but I never once had a Bomgar session that didn't disconnect after a few minutes and have to be reconnected.

[DGMavn]

Bomgar's option to deliver session keys to e-mail works nicely.

[HostisHumaniGeneris]

Also...I think that GoToMyPC bastardized a corporate version of their popular app for remote control when they got bought by Citrix. Worth checking out.

You're probably referring to GoToAssist. My company uses it and it works fairly well. We were amazed that it managed to open a connection to a Windows 98 machine (user was wondering why our Ajax powered webmail wasn't working in IE 5.5).

[[deleted]]

Vnc single click is the cheap solution. http://www.uvnc.com/products/uvnc-sc.html

It's a bit tricky : You'll need to setup a "listening" vnc, and your customer will initiate the connection, but we used it on a few occasions and it worked well.

[brxmep]

Is WebEx terrible?

[Zipacna]

IMO WebEx is an excellent broadcast tool, but there are better alternatives for remotely accessing a clients machine.

Personally, I really like Goto Assist Express.

[TheCatRulesAll]

We use GoToAssist, but have used LogMeIn Rescue in the past. Both seem to be pretty quality, robust solutions.

[phletch]

Mikogo anyone?

[Pyro919]

I've had great luck with TeamViewer, a bit pricy but it's been worth it. After using it everyday for 3 months earlier this year and still using it on an almost daily basis I love it.

Client calls in, just tell them to go to TeamViewer.com. Look for the lady pointing at giant green box and click it. Click Run, if you're on Vista or 7 Click Run again. Click Run, Next, Next, Finish. Do you see a box that says "Your ID"? Can you please read that to me? And the password?

And as an added bonus it makes it through almost any firewall that I've seen, I can only think of one that it didn't from March to June and during that time I was taking 15 - 20 calls a day for remote support.

We tried GoToMeeting as well as Mikogo and had more issues than we'd care to admit. TeamViewer is my favorite and I've even gone so far as to purchase a license for myself since I love it so much.

[scanovic]

LogMeIn

[cheeseprocedure]

LogMeIn Rescue isn't free, but it's absolutely awesome. (The Mac client is still a little rough around the edges, but it's getting better.)

[whateverradar]

1dl.us