Remote Assistance - Comments Page 3

Quote: EDITOR'S NOTE: ... encryption is being used on the Internet route... Can you link to any resources which will support that statement? That was always a concern for me with NetMeeting, IE that only some of the data channels were encrypted.

Another one of those 3rd party services that I ran across while googling is skyfex.com. logmein.com seems to have gotten fairly expensive for the home user who wants to help his/her grandpa.

Also wanted to post a link to one of the more detailed walkthroughs which I found very helpful at http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=28481&rl=1

EDITOR'S NOTE: I found a quote from a MS rep that sais "Remote Assistance uses the same RDP protocol as Remote Desktop and is encrypted (using the RCA RC4 cipher)." Also, the FREE version of LOGMEIN has not gone away. I use it all the time!

My personal experiences with Remote Assistance have been that it works well, but I find it's more reliable (trying to establish a connection) when using Windows Live Messenger. Also, one or both parties need to have UPnP enabled on their routers (if routers are in use). You can read the details here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301529/en-us

As has been mentioned several times, LogMeIn Free (or Pro) is a good alternative, which doesn't have some of the issues that plague Remote Assistance to deal with -- firewalls, NAT, dynamic IP addresses, etc.

Just a few questions i need answers to. I would like to know, Will it work if i am using Windows XP and trying to remote assist Windows Vista. If so why will it not connect us. Please Help

They all suck. Plain and simple. Neither of these programs offer a simple solution to recurring problem of helping someone who doesn't know what they are doing behind a computer keyboard. I've had tons of problems trying to help my parents with their computers via remote assistance, only to become stumped myself as to how to get them to be able to configure their router so I can get access in the first place. Computers stink.

Nice job, thank you. You mentioned rdesktop as an alternative for Linux/Unix users. I'd just precise that the Remote desktop server is only included in professionnal version of XP. So Linux/unix users won't be able to access a WinXP Home desktop through this application. This is actually quite tricky to do this with a good response time and security over the internet...

what about if my freind has Lunix and I have windows XP and i want him to remote access and take over my PC.. how or can that work?

@dave

if your friend is a whiz to install linux on his pc then it is not improbable that he knows how to get packages for RDC on windows platform

my two cents