VNC vs. Remote Desktop vs. Others

Posted on March 22, 2007, under Development, Software.

I love remote connections, be it either Remote Desktop or VNC. Being able to control something remotely is invaluable these days, I would put this under the same category as Virtualization in the helpfulness department. So which one do you use Remote Desktop or VNC? Well there are pros and cons to each, and even though they accomplish the same basic thing they are indeed different.

Remote Desktop:

We use Remote Desktop at work for all of our web servers and SQL servers, and it works. Jeff Atwood has a great write up on some of the well known pitfalls of Remote Desktop. The biggest for me is that Remote Desktop treats every connection as a new session. When I am on the server, and multitasking my connection will timeout and I will have to re login in and kind of start from scratch. There are settings on the server side you can tweak in order to make this period longer, but it’s just not what I need/want.

VNC:

I use VNC at home for my file server that has no monitor or keyboard hooked up to it. This is a pitfall itself because if I I ever need to get into the BIOS or do things before Windows is loaded, I have to drag a monitor and keyboard from the closet; but for the most part it sits there and runs. VNC is great for my purposes, especially during my daily backup regime. I can log in at any time and check the status of the backups, close the VNC window, login later on and have the same thing in front of me. A live snapshot of the desktop is perfect for when there are not more than one person utilizing a login. The other benefit of VNC is the variety, there are many projects out there that have great software. Some even make clients for Mobile devices. VNC is still actively moving forward, where Microsoft seems like they have bigger fish to fry.

Copilot:

In kind of a side category I have used Fogcreek’s Copilot product which is perfect for trouble shooting a computer for a friend or family member. The whole connection is setup on the website, initiated through email, each party downloads a personalized client,and it just works! Instead of typing out long emails with step by step instructions, it takes less time to just remote in and fix it. We have used this at work to get into customers computers, with permission obviously, to trouble shoot our products when they are acting strange. A quick way to gain access when you do not want to setup a permanent remote connection.

How do you prefer your remote connections? Remote Desktop, VNC, Go To My PC, something else?

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