The elusive quest for fast remote desktop to my Mac laptop

I desperately didn’t want to pay the $199 for Timbuktu, but I finally gave in. The quest was simple: find a reliable, fast way to remote into my MacBook laptop running Leopard from my desktop running Windows 2008, over a gigabit LAN. The laptop sits next to me–I just want to use one keyboard. The simplest features will do: I’m not looking for clipboard access across sessions, or file copying, or anything other than pure speed. One keyboard, one mouse, 54" of screen real-estate, two OS’s and 12G of RAM between them. Should be heaven, right? It isn’t.

VNC is the first tool that pops up when starting on this quest. As I’ve written before, VNC is a dog: it might feel great for people who are used to 56k modems, but I have watched movies from my Dell M90 across RDP on my desktop. I want fast.

How do I define fast? Well, I don’t need to watch movies, but when I run my mouse across the dock bar the icons should just…move. No flickering, no stuttering. Timbuktu manages to pull that off.

So I tried the canon of remote services: LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, and a handful of others. LogMeIn, while free, took roughly 7 seconds to redraw my 17" laptop screen in a browser window. GoToMyPC was the best after that, but still horridly chunky.

I then found Symantec’s PCAnywhere works with OS X. The latest version (12.1) was priced just a little less than the Timbuktu solution. I found a free trial of 12.0, downloaded, and failed on install in Win2k8. I checked the usual suspects (Admin privileges, directory access), without success.

I found Bomgar (www.bomgar.com), but I didn’t have the heart in me to try a product that "starts at $1,988". I’d rather just turn to my left and type on the MacBook keyboard…

It was my hope after reading some of the hurlyburly around RDP that I might find an alternative to Timbuktu, but nothing showed significant promise, not yet at least. For now, Timbuktu will have to do, even though it hurts to pay for something I’ve used for free for years!

Posted on February 26, 2008 at 2:06 pm in .NET | RSS feed | Respond | Trackback URL

15 Responses to “The elusive quest for fast remote desktop to my Mac laptop”

Gerry
February 27, 2008 at 10:01 am

You should check out NTR Support as it encompasses all of the GoTo Solutions in one technology at a better pricepoint.
NTR does attended and unattended remote control

Gerry

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Jonathan
February 27, 2008 at 11:19 am

Is it fast? Can I watch movies over it? If not…

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Justin Brock
February 27, 2008 at 1:18 pm

Jonathan,
Thanks for checking us out, even if it is just to realize we’re a B2B support solution.

Look, if it’s just a matter of turning to your left to type on your Mac keyboard, you may want to try out Synergy: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/. A .net developer here was using it to control both a Mac and a Windows computer with one keyboard/mouse.

Not sure what you should do when you’re outside the network.

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Justin Brock
February 27, 2008 at 1:40 pm

This is Justin Brock from Bomgar again. Forgot to say that synergy is free!

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Jonathan
February 28, 2008 at 10:05 pm

Hey Justin, yep, I remember Synergy from back when I was using MaxiVista heavily. That allows you to “extend” your current desktop across other machines; there is a subtle difference between that and RDP. RDP (or VNC, or any of the other remoting approaches) allows me to see the remote desktop in a window–which I can minimize, and reclaim the screen real-estate if needed. With Synergy, you lose a screen.

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Justin Brock
March 7, 2008 at 8:45 am

WebEx has a consumer-level tool http://pcnow.webex.com/. Hate to say that because we compete with their enterprise remote support solution. But we’re focused on businesses, not personal pc remote access.

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Jonathan
March 7, 2008 at 9:52 am

I tried the free trial of the WebEx service early on (along with GoToMyPC and LogMeIn–but forgot to mention it!). All of those services attempt to provide you with access through firewalls; in order to do that, they use HTTP through a central service. In my own tests, I found that too slow for PC-to-Mac remote desktop. I haven’t given up, though!

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Ian McGowan
October 1, 2008 at 8:31 am

Not sure I understand the comment about “With Synergy, you lose a screen”. If you “just want to use one keyboard”, then open up the screen on the laptop and use synergy. You’re gaining a screen – that of the laptop.

I’m sitting in front of dual monitors on XP, with a linux system connected to a third monitor on the left. Controlled with one keyboard and mouse. I have *more* screen real estate, not less.

For fast remote control, check out http://www.nomachine.com.

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Jonathan
October 1, 2008 at 9:08 am

You’re absolutely right, Ian–the setup in my mind was taking one of my monitors, and plugging it in to the laptop. The laptop sits far enough away from me that I can’t see the screen clearly unless it’s plugged into an external monitor (with three 24″ monitors, and a 17″ laptop at 1920×1200, I have to squint). Not ready to give one up just yet.

And just as a side note, I’m still happily using Timbuktu–it’s slow from time to time, definitely doesn’t like Win2k8 x64 (but works after a startup error), but is good enough for me to use OmniFocus from my PC.

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Jonathan
October 1, 2008 at 9:15 am

Ian, your afternote about nomachine–it doesn’t seem to have a Mac server component? That would rule it out as a viable option for what I’m looking to do.

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shawn
April 9, 2009 at 10:37 am

Let’s face it anything for free tends to be lame on our MACS. In the case of VNC the real key with uVNC is the mirror driver which speeds up the screen refreshes. I have no issue with PC to PC with uVNC and think version 1.02 is near prefect for business needs.

I have been struggling since I bought my first MAC this spring (love it) but it just fails me on so many business needs, one being remote access. Vine and the OS X default just don’t cut it regardless of the client you use so there has to be some wrong with the design of the software end that makes these two products run equally slow (or they are in fact the same software code!) or something in OS X chocks them out.

There are no good free solutions for mac remote server that are acceptable!

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Braintiller
February 22, 2010 at 4:35 am

Why don’t you try RHUB
remote access? It really worked well for me. It has got some great features to ensure complete control of the remote system, such as instant remote control, faster remote access, remote reboot, firewall and proxy-compliance, file transfer, chat and recording.

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- Jonathan
  February 22, 2010 at 8:27 am
  
  Except the price is prohibitive. I’m not interested at all in something that costs that much, and certainly I don’t understand the need for a physical device. This should be as simple as implementing RDP!
  
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Geoffery Craigson III
September 18, 2011 at 8:01 pm

Hmmm.. I’ve used ARD (VNC with extras) to watch movies over the LAN, Mac to Mac though.

RDP is so much trickery and voodoo, somethings won’t work on it as a result, but it is FAST. The obvious issue is that RDP servers can only be Microsoft Windows. Although, I think you will find that the output is not “identical” on the client, depending on compression and colour settings.

Some people have had some success with xrdp on Mac, ie running the xrdp server.

Of course, X Window System is implemented on Mac OS X for some time (forever?), and will happily serve X Window apps over the network. The only issue is that the apps need to be X Window apps, and most Mac apps aren’t.

Many, many extensions to VNC. Many variations on the same theme. Timbuktu is yet another. I’m reticent to pay for said product.

Not all of the services like LogMeIn, TeamViewer etc will realise the two computers are on the same LAN, and will route traffic via the internet, adding to the delay.

If you are purely interested in serving video, then VLC might be suitable. I’ve used it to serve video from a Mac over the network. Or you can use Apple’s Quicktime Streaming tools, which is the same idea more or less.

Any reason not to sit in front of the Mac, and access the Windows box via RDC?

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