VNC is such a terrible method of remote control of a workstation, limited functions, poor screen display, poor scaling, horrible dual screen handling, difficult to scale to fit, general use is extremely cumbersome, etc
With so many better commercial options for remote control on the market, I'm baffled by the fact that Zenworks continues to use such an archaic means of remote control.
Is VNC really the best you can do?
by: Marvin H. | over a year ago | Remote Mgmt
Comments
Speaking as a avid VNC user, I've been using it with and without ZCM with few complaints. Can you elaborate on these short comings of VNC you're talking about?Depending on the issues you're having, it could be a configuration issue or something else affecting VNC (like DNS name not resolving).
What other remote control methods do you suggest that would do:
-a "better" job? "Better" needs to be defined IMHO
-provide all the currently supported features (cross platform compatibility, encryption, remote session, remote diagnostics, remote collaboration, etc?)
I've been an avid Zenworks fan since the early 2000's, and to be honest I would have never expected such a narrow minded and ignorant response to a legitimate suggestion from someone in your *shrinking* user/customer community.
No, it's not a DNS or configuration issue that I struggle with, but thanks for immediately blaming the implementation rather than the product itself.
Teamviewer, Logmein, GotomyPC.. They're all just fantastic products. Easy to use and they generally work every time. None of the constant quirks you get when trying to initiate remote control with Zen (That are well documented in forum postings and bugfixes).
Whenever possible, I use Teamviewer to access systems, even if Zenworks is available for remote control. I actually push out a Teamviewer Bundle with ZEN for this purpose. I do this because when I use Zenworks for remote control, I feel like I'm wearing a blindfold and have my hands tied behind my back.
Better Job?
- The biggest thing is that you can't even work on a system that has dual or triple monitors. It's horrible. Other products have adapted to this just fine and offer simple screen switching. With ZCM all the screens are mashed into one really wide screen and it scales so small that you can't see anything. And then if you try to scale larger, it suddenly becomes very cumbersome to get around to anything. Either way, it's impossible to work on. Meaning, as soon as I turn off Auto-scaling to try to make it so i can see one of the screens, I am constantly scrolling up / down and left/right to access the part of the screen that i need. It's literally the worst thing ever and wastes so much time.
- The next biggest thing is that the controls are very clunky and archaic and make me feel like I'm back in 1995. Other products are visually easy on the eyes, quick and easy to use, and have easy to use and functional on screen controls to control scaling, performance, and other common tasks. The ZCM controls that are visible are tiny, and the ones that are actually useful are buried in a menu that you have to pull up separately.
- There are just a lot of things that act/seem/feel quirky that could be a lot better that other vendors don't seem to have a problem with.
I personally don't really care much about cross platform support (other vendors have figured this out so whatever, you're developers, I'm sure you could too), remote diagnostics (Don't find it very useful), remote collaboration (I have never used this and honestly have no idea what the value there is). Generally when I want to do something on a PC, I want to actually be looking at the screen to see what's going on. I think in general, as developers you guys try to add features in that don't really matter as much, and then you completely ignore the ones that need the most improvement.
I care about Encryption but other products use that. I am unclear on your point regarding encryption.
Historically VNC has been acceptable solution but with Win 10 and dual monitors we are experiencing more problems with ZCM remote such as mouse pointer not registering correctly. clicks being off by inches between remote session and guest PC. etc. What about NoMachine/NX as an option?
I'm following up on my suggestion and once again requesting something better. The current remote control sucks so bad it is pretty much non-usable on todays systems especially with dual or large monitors. Every other remote technology is better. I find myself basically running the remote control just long enough to install the Teamviewer agent, then from there that's the only way I even try to connect. It's unfortunate that the developers do not see it this way. VNC was always a Linux remote solution that just happened to be "sort of" patched over to Windows but was never as good as other products developed specifically for Windows as mentioned previously. I also find that as someone that works with numerous customers wtih different environments and platforms, I tend to avoid a discussion about Zenworks at all, mainly because it is so limited in it's remote control functionality. Why would I install a solution into a customer base that works terrible compared to other more mainstream solutions?