Revealing the company’s historical Macintosh favoritism, Timbuktu Pro remote clients monitored by Macintosh machines have more remote-control ability than those monitored by consoles running on Windows. Macintosh controllers can make QuickTime movies of remote sessions, for example, while Windows controllers can’t do so.
Installation for Macs includes typing in a 40-character key, but the installation for PCs didn’t require that key.
Registering the product online to Netopia triggers an e-mail to the listed administrator with all licensed software keys, making it easy to cut and paste them. With no host or proxy server in the middle of the remote-control process, Timbuktu Pro administrators must connect directly to computers to initiate a remote-control session.
Finding remote users may be problematic when they sit behind firewalls. Besides getting to the remote box via the expected TCP/IP network transport, you can dial up modem to modem, or connect via Skype.
Leveraging Skype’s stealth ability to pass through firewalls, Timbuktu Pro connects from outside by sliding down the Skype virtual telephone wire, connecting via Skype’s file-transfer back-channel.
But the bandwidth-limited Skype link makes the connections extremely slow. Spend your waiting time worrying whether outsiders can use this to control and perhaps transfer files through your perimeter, leaving no audit trail.
Remote performance gives only a slight heaviness when dragging cards in Solitaire, both on local networks and across Internet links, making remote control usable when opening and closing windows and applications.
Playing Windows Solitaire on a G4 PowerBook does look a bit odd and feel a bit treasonous. The slight lag for menu items and windows to open isn’t too bothersome. Screen-resolution differences between Macs and Windows PCs are presented well, with auto scrolling and one-click screen scaling to shrink a high-resolution remote screen into a smaller control window.
The file-transfer utility opens a Mac-style two-paned window on a Mac, and a Windows Explorer-style utility on a PC. Screens from the remote system automatically scroll to follow mouse movements beyond visible edges when the remote screen is as large as or larger than the controlling screen, a nice touch missing from competitors.
However, there are no traditional troubleshooting tools, such as inventory lists and disk partitioning, offered by NetSupport to speed the support technician’s work. You can make a QuickTime movie of a remote session run by a Mac.
Mac-heavy groups will probably start and stop their PC remote-control software search right here. Administrators using Macs in Windows-heavy situations may also lean toward Timbuktu Pro.
