Apple Remote Desktop - any good/worth it?

[skp574]

I need to remote access my desktop from my PowerBook either on my home LAN (wifi) or across the Internet from work.

I have been trying to use VNC and find it too slow, as the iMac has a higher screen resolution than my PB and Chicken of the VNC won't scale. Therefore I have to scroll around the screen to see anything. Windows animations cause it to slow down as well.

I have been thinking about getting Appple Remote Desktop which will allow remote control as well as software updating, etc.

I do intend to get more Macs in the future so this would seem ideal to be able to update their software and remote control them.

Any thoughts on ARD?

 

[alex_ant]

ARD has a lot of features, but in my experience (with 2.1), it is crashy and buggy. For example, putting Macs to sleep doesn't work for me for some reason even though it works in 1.2. Also, I once tried to install a 10.3 OS update .pkg file onto an iMac with ARD's package installation feature, and it ended up totally trashing the iMac's System folder - I had to reinstall the OS.

On the bright side, ARD does support screen scaling. But I don't think ARD is worth its price for a home user. I would wait for a later version, at least.

 

[jim.]

It has some neat features, but it can get pretty slow also. I was an evil person and downloaded it to see if it would help me keep all of our macs at work up to date and help me with troubleshooting. If it did I would have a case for my boss to get it for our lab. Unfortunately at the price point, I found it wasn't worth it and got rid of the program.

I found that it was slow even over a university ethernet. There were things that I wanted to do that required administrator privileges, and the only way to get those was to take over the computer. I wish you could execute an sudo from the send UNIX command without having to nopasswd the user. In my case ssh and sftp do most everything I need.

But on the plus side it does scale the screens! And you can cut down on detail in real time (can't recall if you can do that with vnc now).

It's up to you whether or not it is worth the $300. It wasn't for our lab.

Jim