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Symantech pcAnywhere Review: Remote Desktop |
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| Pricey but full of options; not the easiest to use, poor setup and performance | |
Full Review: |
At $199.99, Symantec pcAnywhere is the most expensive remote access option we reviewed. It's also one of the few to offer cross-platform compatibility. However, Potential customers should be cautioned that the program is anything but plug-and-play.
We consider ourselves to have a fair amount of technical savvy and are loathe to consult instruction manuals, so we were disappointed with the product set-up and installation. It's never particularly clear how you should handle the installation (since the package needs to be installed once on each computer). The documentation is not approachable, and trying to install anything other than the basic package (as was the case with the cross-platform package) is less-than-clear. Installing the cross-platform product on the Mac was among the most painful and error-ridden installations we've ever encountered and required multiple support chats (and ironically, allowing the tech support agents to use a separate remote access program to control our computer). Once we got it going it worked, though not as well as we would have liked. We were not satisfied with the image quality of the host computer's screen. We saw a lot of strange artifacting and flickering. We also ran into trouble using the remote control to operate the Windows Media Player on the host computer. We did like some of pcAnywhere's tools such as the integrated whiteboard (which allows you to mark-up or annotate the user's screen) and the chat client. We experienced even more frustrating performance when installing the host on a Mac. The graphic representation was very poor and very slow. However, it is the only remote access solution that we reviewed that offers a host for the Mac. Symantec's pcAnywhere is the most expensive remote access tools we used, and it's hard to justify that cost for most users. To be fair, the product seems to offer a high degree of configurability, making it probably more well-suited to companies with dedicated IT departments than home or small-office users. Host System Compatability:Windows 2000-Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Pocket PC Remote System Compatability:Windows 2000-Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Pocket PC |
Service Details:
| Trial: | None |
| Cost: | $199.99/Lifetime 1 PC |
| System Compatability: | Host and remote: Windows 2000-Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Pocket PC |
| Access Method: | Remote Client |
| Features: | Screen sharing & remote, file sharing, chat, remote restart, white boards |
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