Day 16 - PC/Laptop Remote Access

One of the things I always find useful to do is to be able to remote access into my PC from another device on my network. I have for many years used Real VNC when going between, my now defunct, laptop and my desktop. However there seemed to be a plethora of apps for Android that would allow me to do this so I thought I would look further into doing it from the Galaxy Tab.

The first one that you may heard of is the very good Log Me In Ignition.This requires an account on the Log Me In website, but this is free depending on what level of functionality you want, but once you have done that it works very well. The benefit of the Log Me In Ignition is that it is optimised for the larger screens you will find it makes good use of the extra space afforded to it by the Galaxy Tab. The only downside is that the app is a paid for app and its very expensive! The cost currently is £9.19 and that's in a 50% off sale! I would suggest that if your an IT professional and remote support is something you do very often or your a heavy user of the free Log Me In service I would recommend this app to you, otherwise I'm not sure its quite worth the money they are asking.

One of the other apps that I have tested is the Win Remote application. This runs in conjunction with a service that you have to install on your PC to enable the functionality, which is a bit of a shame as I was hoping it would work using the Remote Desktop Client services which have been part of Windows for sometime.

Win Remote - Main Menu

The benefits of installing the extra service are numerous, giving you access to remote controls for your PC, access to Windows Media Centre, Task Manager, File Manager and others. I must confess though as much as I liked this app and everything it was going to do for me above a normal VNC style app, I just couldn't get it to work. It would happily connect to my PC and display the desktop or the File Manager but actually getting it do anything was very difficult. 

Win Remote - Remote Desktop

I found that the Remote Desktop wouldn't fill the whole screen on the Galaxy Tab, presumably because its designed for a phone sized screen. Also whenever I moved my finger across the screen in an effort to control the mouse as you normally would, nothing happened. I tried to click on the Windows button but still no reaction, so I'm not sure if I was doing anything wrong but it certainly wasn't giving me remote access. The one thing it did seem to respond to was my command to switch it off, which is very useful, but it took at least 2 attempts at the command to get it to do it. 

The best Remote Access app I found was from Wyse using their PocketCloud service. Now you would think with a name like that the app is designed for for a business that already has the necessary cloud infrastructure but actually its perfectly designed for people like you and I. When you first load the application it asks if you want to create an account or just carry on. 

Wyse - PocketCloud

The Wyse client will connect either to the Remote Desktop Connection built into Windows or to a 3rd party VNC server installed on your PC which gives you a much greater flexibility for connectivity. The only issue with it is that you can only have the 1 connection setup within the app otherwise it will prompt you to upgrade which is a little bit annoying. If you, like me, only want to connect to one PC then its ideal.

Wyse - PocketCloud - RDP

 The app itself has been designed to run with Honeycomb which is a plus although when you come to the desktop connection your very much limited by the resolution setup on your PC. The screenshot above shows my PC which is set at 1280 x 1024, this leaves a small gap at the side of the screen which is slightly annoying. This can soon be fixed by using the small control circle in the middle of the screen, this gives you more option to do with your desktop like make it fill the screen and special keys. Its actually a really neat idea and works well much like the additional controls the Google provided as a lab feature in the Browser app. This is definitely the best Remote Access app I have found and may even be worth the £8.99 to upgrade to the full version, but I'll have to leave that up to you.