

Ask HN: Is there a remote desktop program as good (and cheap) as Dropbox? - staunch

I know there are dozens of remote desktop apps. I've used many of them including GoToMeeting, VNC, etc. It's been a while but I can't find any that seems super great. They all seem to be complicated or sucky.<p>Is there any cross-platform, cheap, secure, trusthworthy Dropbox-like program that does remote desktop?<p>I want to just install a tiny little program on all my computers and very quickly be able to see the desktop of any of them <i>from</i> any of them.<p>I imagine a little taskbar icon that I click and there's a list of all available computers. I select one and it opens a window with the desktop visible.<p>My primary machine is Linux (Ubuntu), but I have Windows and Mac computers as well.<p>If this doesn't exist I would definitely use and promote the hell out of it. I'd even be willing to pay some smallish yearly fee for it. If it doesn't exist I highly suggest someone on HN get to work making it.<p>The remote desktop industry seems to be very similar to remote storage was pre-Dropbox.<p>Then again, I'm hoping I'm wrong and this already exists, so I don't have to wait :-)
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maxbrown
Have you looked at <http://www.logmein.com>? They have a free version, and
it's a solid in-browser remote desktop program that just runs a small
background program on any computer you want to connect to. Only issue is I'm
not sure they have support for Linux... could be a deal-breaker for you.

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staunch
It seems the closest, but it reminds me of the predecessors to Dropbox a lot.
I couldn't even figure out which of their 7 products I should choose.

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runjake
Start off the with free version. When you need another feature, see what the
lowest tier is that has your desired features, get that. Repeat as needed.

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HerraBRE
Are you a developer?

Most of the pieces exist as open source (assuming VNC is good enough for you),
wrapping a nice GUI around them using something like wxPython might not be to
hard.

It's an interesting idea for sure. I've been fiddling around with tunneling
VNC over PageKite (my project) a bit, but it hadn't yet resulted in anything
I'd call a "product vision". This post brings me quite a few steps closer to
that. Too bad my TODO list is already rather long...

If you are interested and able to do some coding, I could probably be talked
into helping out and providing some infrastructure. ;-)

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staunch
I am. I have my own startup to worry about though!

It's very tempting because I think it's the kind of thing that could see
Dropbox-like success and there is a bunch of open source code to borrow from.

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bricestacey
I'm confused. Dropbox does file-sharing, not remote desktop. Also, your
requirements seem to want your computers to not be synced, hoever Dropbox
syncs across all clients - so differentiating between computers (e.g. "a list
of all available computers") is not necessary.

Unfortunately I do not know of any out of the box solutions. You could setup
samba shares on each computer and if you want to access them anywhere then
proxy through Amazon. Otheriwse, I'm hoping this might help you better phrase
your request.

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staunch
I just mean the simplicity and quality of Dropbox, not synchronizing anything.

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spicyj
Have you seen <https://www.copilot.com/>? Looks pretty close to what you want.

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staunch
Yeah. That's more of a transactional style help desk tool.

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macca321
GBridge is pretty decent if you use windows <http://www.gbridge.com/>

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maushu
<http://teamviewer.com> You don't even need to install it to run.

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flignats
Teamviewer is another nice remote desktop tool that has a bunch of neat
features. It is also... free.

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BenWGarton
I like jump desktop for my iOSneeds

