Edit: I should add that I'm willing to pay for a service, but most of the options I've seen are for enterprise customers, not individuals with a few clients.
I'm also looking for something that can be used commercially, that doesn't cost a ton. I've looked at both Teamviewer's and LogMeIn's licenses in the past and found them unmanageable for some of my situations.
source: I am a founder of Fog Creek Software, makers of Copilot.com
I tried copilot - but it failed utterly and miserably on two points:
- DPI. My grandmother's computer has a high DPI setting, so she can read menus/buttons. When connecting from my local computer, copilot just couldn't handle the DPI difference (appearently).
- Windows 8/Metro. When my grandma was stuck in metro, I couldn't connect remotely. Which sort of defeated the purpose of the tool.Many presences have seemingly declined, in the last few years. Interests and competing demands change for everyone; there's also some ongoing speculation that as HN has grown and, for lack of a better term, the signal/noise ratio has declined, those more interested in a focused and concentrated "signal" have lost interest, or patience with the noise.
Also, any individual's participation, even if held at a steady level, is likely to decline in prominence at least somewhat amidst the vastly increased HN traffic.
I can't speak for Joel on this (I don't know him, even remotely). But since the grandparent was speaking about presences more generally.
I've got around 20 clients I have to meet with in person every 6-12 weeks. I'd like to have a client app I can install on each of their computers (PC and Mac) so at any time I can jump on and help them without any prompt (other than possibly a "allow David access, yes or no" option.
It is likely that the real problem is that I'm just not charging enough. With what I current charge my clients, I can't justify $5 / month for a client who generates on average $15-30 in revenue each month (that's average, because I don't meet with them every month).
I like the Copilot Classic pay by the minute pricing, and if my users were more tech savy, that could work well. But they aren't and by the time I get them to connect to a website and get the screenshare running, they'd rather I just setup an appointment to meet with them in person. The Copilot Classic pricing structure though could work well for allowing me to answer any questions that take less than 15-20 minutes remotely and reserve onsite appointments for the bigger issues.
I'll still have to give it a try with a few of my more tech savy clients and see if we can't make it work. Thanks for the suggestion.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-help-windows-...
[1] https://www.nomachine.com/ [2] http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/
Also, they're about to fix their firewall limitation:
"NoMachine Anywhere is the next piece of the puzzle. NoMachine Anywhere is a free service, which will be available to everyone, enabling people to connect to each other's computer behind routers and firewalls, without the need for knowing their IP address. Initially slated for end 2013, it has been moved to first quarter 2014." -from their website