Computer Geek Question, Please

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Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:10 pm

We use Ultra VNC viewer to check out the operation of individual POS terminals at most of the sites we service. We have a customer that refuses to use Ultra VNC because he's a dick. Do you fine people know of a viable subtitute?

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:13 pm

I wouldn't count people that wouldn't use VNC as "dicks" as it is a slow and majorly outdated program and does have drawbacks if your machine isn't quite up to specs. If you are running Windows XP Pro or Windows Vista there's a desktop sharing program built right into those, same with Mac OSX 10.4.5 or later. Also there's PC Anywhere from Symantec.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:20 pm

Oh, I may typed that badly. He's not a dick because he refuses to use Ultra VNC, he's a dick in general (he's one of the guys that didn't see the humor in my hidden "GO STEELERS" messages on his touch screens), and he doesn't want to use Ultra VNC, probably because he knows I like using it. We connect to the individual store servers via PC Anywhere or LOGMEIN. Then we use Ultra VNC to look at each terminal via its IP address. The software has to run on XP.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:31 pm

Have you tried Desktop Authority, Remote Administrator, or Dameware?

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:39 pm

Thanks, ook.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:03 pm

@Chibacha,
VNC is a protocol, not the app. And I don't know where you get this "outdated" and "slow" info...you just have to use the right proggie and settings Smile

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:12 pm

@Rep - the only problem with those is that they will have to be loaded on the machine you want to take over. Also some give the option of whether you want the person to take over the machine or not.

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:01 pm

Reprob8 wrote:

refuses to use Ultra VNC because he's a dick.

Yup!

I use VNC all of the time. Works great and is cross platform for MAC, Windows and Linux.

On the big AV jobs a lot of the gear is IP based with a built in web server. We configure them Static and can then just VPN in and point the browser to the gear.

Depending on the OS the POS runs on it may or may not have the MS RDP server built in. In that case you would probably have to upgrade the license. Unfortunately most of what I set up is either VNC or RDP.

You could take a look at webmin for windows http://www.apachelounge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=670 however depending on the type of work you need to do it might not work for you. on Linix servers it works great.

My advice would be to have a nice chat with Dick. Something along the lines of:

" Hi Dick. While we usually use VNC because it works great and is free we do have this other product that is available. Now Dick, this other product is WAY more expensive to purchase and will take up WAY more of our Billable time to set up and administer. However it will usually guarantee some uptime during the day. And while M$ claims that none of the crashes are due to any problems in windows the guy from the call center in Bangalore that the developer subcontracted tech support to said that it was entirely an MS problem. However they are working on a solution with the next revision of their software and the good news is that our current licensing scheme will entitle us to a .00034% discount off the downloadable beta version.

So Dick, what do you want to do?"

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:34 pm

hyena or dameware set on demand as a service. Or if you are running AD use that.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 4:32 pm

@Kurat

Probably typed that wrong, VNC as I remember it (I haven't really worked with watching other comptuers in a few years) was a program, and what I remember of it was slow and cumbersome to try and work with and also caused the host computer to crash, but then again, I'm using all Mac's now with OS-X Server which has all that built in and it runs smoother.

Again, it's been a few years.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:48 am

tightVNC is good

the government uses RealVNC

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

r8, which language do you code in? VNC you could

Telnet the computer in question, login, and run windows built in remote desktop - thats free

tightvnc is ok - but its free, http://www.tightvnc.com/

realvnc here 50 usd You said he was retentive anally so pass that cost on to him Smile

[ Joke]
Or you could call me and ill write you a trojan from scratch lmao <<< That bit is a joke, im not being serious. It is jest.
[ / joke ]

thought i better make that joke really clear lol

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