Product Reviews
Control Thyself
Remote control with ease with CrossTec's NetOp 7.01
- By Michael Feuda
- 09/01/2002
I'm always intrigued to see someone remote control another machine. No
matter how much you understand about the bits and bytes behind the scenes,
there still seems to be a bit of black magic and hocus-pocus when someone
from another city or state can move your mouse. How would you like to
perform some of this magic yourself?
NetOp's Remote Control 7.01 offers an amazing set of features for a competitive
price. The core components of the NetOp product are the Guest and Host
modules, which will allow you to perform a multitude of tasks. Along with
polished remote control performance, you can accomplish file transfer,
text and audio chat, remote keystrokes and remote restarts. The remote
control feature is tightly integrated with several security options, along
with such communication protocols as TCP/IP, NetBIOS, IPX and Infrared.
To start testing NetOp Remote Control, I used three different systems:
a Windows 2000 Server, a Windows XP Professional Workstation, and a Windows
98 SE box. I tested all systems with the standard Guest and Host modules.
The installation routine consists of a GUI-driven interface, but I was
also offered the Windows Installer option. Each of my tests went fairly
smooth. I did experience one minor glitch. My rock-solid Windows XP Pro
machine experienced its first "Blue Screen" as a result of performing
some Remote Control tests. I couldn't duplicate this event on further
tests, so it may have been an isolated incident.
After I set up the Guest and Host modules on my test machines, I launched
the NetOp Guest Interface. To connect to a remote Host, I simply filled
in either a NetBIOS name or IP address or clicked on the Browse button
to populate a Browse list. After "calling" the Remote Host and waiting
a few seconds, I was presented with a second window displaying the contents
of the Remote Host. On the top, left-hand side of the window are several
icons that allow you to quickly access the features for remote control
properties, file transfer, and so on. The bottom right-hand side of the
display includes a running session time and status of the remote keyboard
and remote mouse.
Two of my favorite features include file transfer and the remote Clipboard.
If you've ever used a product that sends files from one PC to another,
you'll enjoy the flawless file-transfer capabilities. Another feature
I always dream of having in my home lab is the ability to retrieve the
contents of a clipboard from some other machine. You can choose either
to send or receive the contents of the Clipboard with the click of an
icon.
There are plenty of other advanced features with NetOp Remote Control,
but I simply can't leave out one of my favorite items: the NetOp manual.
Simply stated, "Wow." It's a beefy, 500-page manual that's well documented
and thought out. In this day of the ever-shrinking manual, it was a bit
surprising to see a reference like this. Believe it or not, NetOp products
come with toll-free, pre- and post-sales support in North America. Sounds
too good to be true, huh?
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| The NetOp Console provides you an easy launch pad for
Remote Control and other features. |
In general, I thought the product had as many features as I could possibly
imagine wanting in an enterprise-level remote control software. The performance
of the product appeared to be extremely efficient. NetOp would be a great
choice in deploying remote control software in your IT infrastructure.
About the Author
Michael Feuda, MCSE, NNCDS, is an independent writer. He has worked
with Microsoft products since the days of LAN Manager.