I recently found out about an awesome program that does for remote desktop what Hamachi does for VPN. It’s called TeamViewer and it lets you control someone else’s PC, and it JustWorks(tm). You (as the one providing support) download the “full version” while the client downloads the small, single .exe “customer version”. Both programs generate a unique session id and password. The customer reads theirs out to you over the phone, you type it into your TeamViewer and voila! Instant remote desktop. But it gets better, with the ability to tunnel over port 80 (by default) it gets around most firewalls easily. All traffic is encrypted and the whole package is free for non-commercial use.

As for performance, well I’ve only had a chance to try it out between my Mac and PC in the same house, and it seriously outperforms what I was previously using for “I’m-too-lazy-to-get-up-and-walk-6-metres-to-do-something-on-my-Mac” which was TightVNC connecting to Apple Remote Desktop. On a good day this would use 80% of my Mac’s CPU. PC-to-Mac TeamViewer uses a tiny amount of CPU (around 15% IIRC) so it makes me curious as to what it’s actually using for the remote desktop part. It “feels” like VNC in that the screen is divided into blocks and the cursor lags in the same way, but just performs way better.

There is the slight downside of needing someone at the other end to actually read out the session id and password, so it isn’t a completely unattended solution. But as someone who uses this type of remote support constantly at work, I find myself limited when trying to support non-work computers, such as those owned by relatives or friends. TeamViewer brings professional grade remote support to everyone, and it’s so simple to set up, it’s probably “Nanna Proof”.

There are some acid tests I’d like to perform but haven’t yet had a chance to:

• What’s the performance like over dial-up (at one end)?
• Can it make it past the BFP (Big Friendly Flaky Proxy) at work?
• Is it really Nanna Proof? Test out on real-life Nanna.

Will update this post as I do each test. If you want to be a test-subject, email me.