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We've been using Netmeeting for doing presentations with remote workers. Now that MS has disowned it (and it doesn't run on Vista - mostly), we need something else. Since Netmeeting was free, our budget is right around $0. We don't need audio or video, but do need to share apps/desktop and allow a remote user to take control.

What are some good cheap/free alternatives?

13 Answers13

8

Yugma is a free alternative that I've used before.

With priced options there is

Joseph
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Office Communications Server might not be that expensive. If your company has licensed the Enterprise version of Office, it already comes with a Client Access License for Communicator.

That makes the price of OCS only $700 (for the server), even if you have thousands of clients.

Food for thought.

Portman
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I use Microsoft SharedView It works great in VISTA and it's very easy to use.

JAG
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  • Tried using this on XP and got no where. And then it crashed. – Shog9 Apr 30 '09 at 22:42
  • Shog9, my experience is different. I have used it many times on XP without problems. – JAG May 01 '09 at 18:31
  • I'm sure lots of folks have. But for those of us with the wrong video hardware / drivers / multiple monitors / ??? ... it's effectively useless. And cleaning up that last 10% of breakage doesn't exactly appear to be much of a priority for the developers. – Shog9 May 02 '09 at 00:29
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I'd recommend Citrix's GoToMeeting. I have used it to do both presentations and remote support. Its very simple to use and has worked very well for me in the past, even over poor internet connections.

silent__thought
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There's always VNC. The free version has some OS limitations, but works well. May not work for you b/c you have to pay for the Vista and Mac versions.

Trey Jackson
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  • I second this suggestion. VNC has worked very well for my distributed team. The supported version of VNC have some nice features that are worth paying for. – Rangachari Anand May 01 '09 at 09:35
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We've used both LiveMeeting and Webex with good results.

The Archetypal Paul
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I use SharedView when doing over the web training. It allows the other user to highlight and point to things with their own mouse so you can see what they are talking about.

It's free and has worked very well. The only downside is that all participants must have a Live account (free) in order to start or join sessions.

TheCodeMonk
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DimDim is free (for small meetings that don't need branding) and works pretty well.

Keithius
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i've used radmin for this purpose. it allows file transfer, etc. iirc costs about $50 http://www.radmin.com

Don Dickinson
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adobe's connect now looks slick.

jms
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  • URL: http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/ – Shog9 May 02 '09 at 00:31
  • Connectnow works well, but my experience is that it's really, really slow on older machines (it was a slideshow on an old Pentium 4-based Celeron 2.0 Ghz CPU). Also, it's $40 per month if you want to have meetings with more than 5 people. – Carl C Jun 18 '09 at 22:57
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I've been using Vyew for the last year or so. It's cross platform so Windows, Mac and Linux users can both view and share their screens.

Mike Akers
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You might check out ConferenceXP.

ConferenceXP is a shared-source research platform developed by Microsoft Research that provides simple, flexible, and extensible conferencing and collaboration using high-bandwidth networks and the advanced multimedia capabilities of Microsoft Windows. ConferenceXP helps researchers and educators develop innovative applications and solutions that feature broadcast-quality audio and video in support of real-time distributed collaboration and distance learning environments.

Joseph
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If you just need a quick replacement, you could use the Vista-integrated "Windows Collaboration". It's gotten some bad reviews though, I'd check to make sure it meets your needs first.