Weekly quickTIP
Greggo Loves Free Tools
VisionApp Remote Desktop, WinSCP get nods from quickTIP readers.
- By Greg Shields
- 10/22/2007
Earlier this year I asked you to tell me your favorite free tools. These
are the tools you can’t live without yet have no impact on your budget’s
bottom line. In a world where everyone tries to sell you everything, finding
something that’s good and free is few and far between -- except,
it seems, in the world of tools for Windows administrators. Between this
and next week, I’ll talk about the top four tools submitted and why
they’re exciting.
Alan Kass has a lot of Terminal Servers and keeping them all straight
or doing administration between them can be a major pain without his favorite
tool, VisionApp Remote Desktop. This simple but elegant tool does little
more than aggregate all your Terminal Services sessions into a single
window, where you can select them via a tree view. But, that’s exactly
what a lot of people need when they’re managing lots of Terminal
Servers.
“I went to TechEd last year with a co-worker and we found this great
replacement for Microsoft's weak Remote Desktops," wrote Kass. "It
is visionapp Remote Desktop (vRD 1.5) -- Freeware. It allows you to have
multiple RDP connections that you can have in sorted groups. It uses a
tabbed model for quick access to multiple opened sessions.”
Interestingly enough, he wasn’t the only person who submitted VisionApp
as their favorite -- just the first. Get your copy of VisionApp Remote
Desktop at http://www.visionapp.com.
An absolute must if you’re using any kind of Linux or Unix-based
product (or even VMware ESX), WinSCP wraps a friendly GUI interface around
the somewhat complicated command-line switchery needed to copy files between
Windows and Unix/Linux or between two Unix/Linux servers. Capable of supporting
both SFTP and SCP, WinSCP is a great tool with a very simple interface.
Tech Help—Just An
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Thanks to Eric Maier for sending in this great tool. He says, “As
a tech that requires moving log files back and forth between Linux and
Windows, I get tired of using FTP and changing permissions. WinSCP fits
the bill for me. I can change permissions on the fly and the interface
allows me to drag and drop the file where ever I need to.”
Get your copy of WinSCP at http://winscp.net/eng/index.php.
About the Author
Greg Shields is Author Evangelist with PluralSight, and is a globally-recognized expert on systems management, virtualization, and cloud technologies. A multiple-year recipient of the Microsoft MVP, VMware vExpert, and Citrix CTP awards, Greg is a contributing editor for Redmond Magazine and Virtualization Review Magazine, and is a frequent speaker at IT conferences worldwide. Reach him on Twitter at @concentratedgreg.