Remote Desktop Web Access for FREE? 1st February 2010 at 5:37 pm
The big boys in Remote Desktop Web Access make it look as if you are going to get their service completely free. Then you go to their site and quickly find that they’re offering you a trial period. So what they are offering is NOT free. Their hope is that you’ll try it and then be so hooked you’ll stick with it and start paying. I can’t blame them for doing this as they are offering levels of support with their packages and they are looking to make a profit and obviously they have to pay the support staff. Now as you probably know, I’m an advocate of open source software and systems and by its very nature almost never comes with any level of support other than access to forums.
There are several completely free ways in which to make a remote connection to another desktop but invariably they require port forwarding through firewalls after downloading and installing software, assuming you know which ports to use. If you know what you’re doing then it’s reasonably easy to get things working, that’s also assuming that the other party knows what to do as well.
What we really want is a simple website to go to where both parties can see each other and make the connection. The closest to this is GoToMyPC which uses Java so you need Java runtime library installed on your PC. The advantage of this is that as long as you can install Java runtime, it doesn’t matter whether you use Windows, Mac or Linux. A lot of people already have this installed. The downside of GoToMyPC is that it currently costs $16.95 per computer per month on the monthly plan for 2-20 computers. I think that’s extortionate. Unfortunately I haven’t yet found a free system that works the same way. The only free RDP systems I know of are Microsoft RDP which is not present on the XP Home Edition and various versions of VNC which can be downloaded. One very good system is TeamViewer which is free for personal use but even this requires a license for commercial use. Most software companies that use GNU VNC at the core of their systems still end up charging for their product as they wrap a more friendly front end around VNC and add a few bells and whistles.
If any of you out there know of any free systems that operate like GoToMyPC then please leave some details in a comment.
Well..it IS free. It’s a free trial. The point of any free trial is to ‘hook’ you. So I don’t see what the problem is. If you refuse to pay, there are totally free options available, just be prepared for a lower quality product.
Fair point.