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OSX do remote access like XP Pro's Remote Desktop?

Danksi

Danksi

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 3, 2005
1,554
0
Nelson, BC. Canada
My iMac sits in the home office upstairs and we've a XP Pro laptop downstairs.

I was wondering what was available for OSX, so that I could access the iMac remotely (on our LAN) from the XP box?

I've seen Apple's Remote Desktop application, but that seemed to be more for admin tasks, than using a Mac remotely. It also appeared to only be available at $$$ for 10+ clients - overkill for us.

I've the XP Remote Client to access the XP Pro box from the Mac, but I wanted something that does a similar thing, in reverse.

EDIT: I've just noticed VNC. Seems to do what I need, so I'll check that out! :)
 
Danksi said:
My iMac sits in the home office upstairs and we've a XP Pro laptop downstairs.

I was wondering what was available for OSX, so that I could access the iMac remotely (on our LAN) from the XP box?

I've seen Apple's Remote Desktop application, but that seemed to be more for admin tasks, than using a Mac remotely. It also appeared to only be available at $$$ for 10+ clients - overkill for us.

I've the XP Remote Client to access the XP Pro box from the Mac, but I wanted something that does a similar thing, in reverse.

EDIT: I've just noticed VNC. Seems to do what I need, so I'll check that out! :)
Click to expand...

Yup, OS X has VNC support built in, even. It's called 'Apple Remote Desktop' in the 'Sharing' preference pane. Just get the options on that, and you will see an option to turn on VNC sharing. It'll make you type in a password for the VNC connection, then you're all set. You will just need to get a VNC client like 'Chicken of the VNC' on your other computer, you're all set.)
 
ehurtley said:
You will just need to get a VNC client like 'Chicken of the VNC' on your other computer, you're all set.)
Click to expand...

I didn't know that. Could you give some other examples of VNC Clients just for alternatives.

Edit: Nevermind, I searched and answered my question.
 
Cool, thanks for that. Learn something new every day. :)

The way Apple has that panel set up, it looks like you have to use their client. It even has a link directly to it. :eek:
 
ehurtley said:
Yup, OS X has VNC support built in, even. It's called 'Apple Remote Desktop' in the 'Sharing' preference pane. Just get the options on that, and you will see an option to turn on VNC sharing. It'll make you type in a password for the VNC connection, then you're all set. You will just need to get a VNC client like 'Chicken of the VNC' on your other computer, you're all set.)
Click to expand...

Smashing. Thanks for that. I'll check into Chicken of the VNC. It'll keep the missus happy if I don't have to keep disappearing upstairs to check stuff on the Mac all the time :D (cheaper than an iBook for now too)

EDIT: I realised Chicken of VNC was a Mac only client, so I'm using RealVNC's VNC Viewer for the XP box. It's slow, but does the job of allowing me to check out stuff on the iMac remotely. :D

EDIT EDIT: Trying TightVNC, which seems a little quicker.
 
Danksi said:
Smashing. Thanks for that. I'll check into Chicken of the VNC. It'll keep the missus happy if I don't have to keep disappearing upstairs to check stuff on the Mac all the time :D (cheaper than an iBook for now too)

EDIT: I realised Chicken of VNC was a Mac only client, so I'm using RealVNC's VNC Viewer for the XP box. It's slow, but does the job of allowing me to check out stuff on the iMac remotely. :D

EDIT EDIT: Trying TightVNC, which seems a little quicker.
Click to expand...

You might consider running OSXvnc as opposed to Apple's own VNC server on the Mac. I find it performs a bit better than ARD's VNC.
 
Someone, I dunno who, on this forum had a Web VNC set up so you could use his PowerMac G4 through a web browser. It was awesome, and had like Illustrator and Photoshop on it and that. fun stuff.
 
FWIW, I have used Windows XP Pro's Remote Desktop feature with Microsoft's Remote Desktop clients on various versions of Windows and in OS X. I've also used Apple's Remote Desktop server with Chicken of the VNC as a client. I have found that Microsoft's Remote Desktop seems much more responsive, with the exception of graphic-intensive tasks, it functions nearly as well as sitting at the computer - there is just a slight delay.

Using VNC with my Mac Mini was a different story. I tried a few different clients but it was just sluggish, even when just using it over my local network at home. It was usable at home, but slow. I tried connecting to my Mac Mini from work over the internet and that was just useless. It worked but was so slow I couldn't tolerate it. I use Windows Remote Desktop to connec to my PC at home from work over the internet all the time and it is very responsive. I wish Apple would include a scaled down version of their Remote Desktop application within OS X and provide a client that runs on Windows. I'm not holding my breath though.
 
Sorry to steal the thread, but does anyone know how to get these to work. My goal is to be able to access my computer from anywhere. Do i need to get both chicken of vnc and osxvnc. Then what?? What info do I need and just that basic stuff. I am kinda clueless but would like to be able to do this. Thanks for the help
 
dukebound85 said:
Sorry to steal the thread, but does anyone know how to get these to work. My goal is to be able to access my computer from anywhere. Do i need to get both chicken of vnc and osxvnc. Then what?? What info do I need and just that basic stuff. I am kinda clueless but would like to be able to do this. Thanks for the help
Click to expand...

I can let you know how I did it. Other's may provide more details, or better configuration options.

The easiest is to enabled 'Apple Remote Destop', which should be in your System Preferences, under Sharing.

Alternatively, as posted elsewhere in this thread, you may get better performance using osxVNC, which I've installed but haven't tried it yet. Once installed, it seemed to enable itself by default.

For the Client end, if you're using a Windows box to access the Mac, then I suggest TightVNC (http://www.tightvnc.com), if you're using another Mac for accessing the Server, then Chicken of VNC seems to be popular.

If you're going to be accessing the Mac from outside your own home network, then you'll need to ensure that your router firewall (assuming you have one) is configured to let VNC through.

Hope that gets you started, I'm sure some others will chip in sooner or later. :)
 
dukebound85 said:
Sorry to steal the thread, but does anyone know how to get these to work. My goal is to be able to access my computer from anywhere. Do i need to get both chicken of vnc and osxvnc. Then what?? What info do I need and just that basic stuff. I am kinda clueless but would like to be able to do this. Thanks for the help
Click to expand...

1. Make sure you have Remote Desktop running on the Mac machine (either through OSX VNC, or through Apple's built in VNC server). Install Chicken of the VNC on the viewing machine (the machine you will use to access the system with the VNC server running).

2. Test to make sure you can view the remote machine from another computer within your LAN (this will make sure that the server and viewer are functioning properly).

3. Configure your router/firewall for port forwarding. Generally speaking, the VNC port is 5900. So you would forward all incoming traffic for port 5900 to the machine running the VNC server.

4. To be able to access outside of your LAN, you will need to know your connection's IP. You can view this at www.whatismyip.com. Additionally, you need to configure Dynamic DNS. Basically, by getting a free account from dynds.org or no-ip.org, you can use a hostname in place of the IP. Download an updating client so that the hostname updates when your connection's IP changes (unless you have a static IP).
 
edit: Removed long-winded, and incorrect, post. (Regarding reverseal of 'client' and 'server' terms. It's X that's reversed, not VNC.)
 
ehurtley said:
And to really throw a wrench into things...

When dealing with VNC, you'll have to get accustomed to the 'reverse' terminology. The machine that is doing the work, the one that you will be connecting TO, it called the 'client'. The one that is running the software to connect FROM is the 'server'. It's 100% backwards from what you might think. So say you have an iMac that has Pages and Keynote on it; that you want to access from your XP machine. You install OSXvnc (or enable Apple Remote Desktop.) This Mac is considered the 'client'. On your Windows machine, you install WinVNC or similar to connect TO your Mac from. The Windows machine is considered the 'server'.
Click to expand...
I've never heard of that and I've been using VNC for some time now. Do you have any links that agree with this?
 
grapes911 said:
I've never heard of that and I've been using VNC for some time now. Do you have any links that agree with this?
Click to expand...

Whoops... You're right. I was confusing X with VNC. Hrm. My bad. (going back to edit my post.)
 
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