Any IT representative or system administrator worth his or
her salt is always as available as possible, even off-site. When trouble arises
and you need to step a client through a complex software problem interactively
or troubleshoot a remote server graphically, and whenever a Telnet or SSH
session is insufficient, it’s important to have a VNC client
handy to give you the power to access any other machine over an intranet or the
regular Internet. Of course, it’s assumed that you have a VNC server process
running on the destination machine beforehand in order to facilitate in the
proper handshake and connection. Here are five apps that will work well for
connecting into a VNC server remotely.
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Five Apps
1. VNC Viewer Plus
Although a paid app with a price tag of $99.99, VNC Viewer
Plus might very well be worth every last penny. In addition to the bog standard
VNC connection capability, you can also communicate with Intel hardware,
powered by Advanced Management Technology, literally giving you complete
control over an entire PC, versus control at the operating system level alone
with VNC.
If you are looking for a remote desktop tool with quite the
history to back it up, TightVNC is most certainly worth a look. With the older
version 1.3 provided on the site, the server and viewer software can be used on
versions of Windows as far back as 95 and NT 4.0. You can also utilize JPEG
compression in order to conserve bandwidth and cut down on render lag for
remote sessions. The source code is licensed under GPLv2 and is available as
freeware.
3. TigerVNC
Originally conceived as a direct continuation of the
unreleased TightVNC v4 branch, TigerVNC became its own animal as it were (pun
intended) and delivers a more modern interface in concert with improved
security and bug fixes from the development side. Aside from that, TigerVNC
behaves much like the project it spawned from, and as a result, is also
available under the GPLv2 as freeware.
4. UltraVNC
When it comes to a remote desktop tool that consolidates all
display options right at your fingertips, UltraVNC is quite nice here. Before
you pop into a session, you can choose from a series of pre-defined connection
quality settings, allowing you to jump right into work without having to mess
around with the settings menu later. There is also a chat feature where you can
send text messages across the network to the destination machine for others to
see. UltraVNC is available for free as donationware.
If you’d rather not deal with a dedicated software VNC
viewer client, SmartCode Solutions has an ActiveX-powered VNC viewer which
works a lot like regular viewers do, albeit with less features. You are also
limited to Internet Explorer 8 and up, due to the fact that ActiveX is
required, and not something more ubiquitous like a Java applet. This web
service is available for free.