Good desktop sharing apps

Question

I am about to be moving and working remotely full time. Right now we use Yugma and Skype for developer conferencing and showing the desktop, but we do not pay for Yugma so there is no ability to grant control. Before I recommend anything that is not free, what are the best options for apps that allow you to share your desktop with multiple other people and also have the ability to grant control of your desktop.

I personally only need to worry about the software working on XP/Vista but feel free to put any options here, did a search and nothing came up about this particular topic so hopefully it can be a good place for everyone to come to.

Answer 1

We usually use Netmeeting but that is only on Winblows.

Answer 2

Try TeamViewer. The cool thing about it is that you don't have to worry about opening/forwarding ports on your firewall.

Answer 3

VNC is free, cross platform, works great. We use it for fairly large presentations with lots of people connected so it can handle a lot of viewers. And I use it all the time to remotely control other computers on my network.

Answer 4

Have you tried NetMeeting/Windows Meeting Space? I believe suits your requirements based on your description.

Answer 5

Check out this post by Scott Hanselman: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WorkingRemotelyFromHomeTelepresenceAndVideoConferencingOneYearLater.aspx

Answer 6

UltraVNC, they have some nice extras to package up for you clients to enable you to access their desktop.

Answer 7

Try Virtual Network Computing - there are a number of free clients available, most of which are compatible but offer their own set of advanced features.

EDIT: Wow, beaten by like three people :/

Answer 8

I use Acrobat connect. Works well, up to 15 people, webcam, desktop sharing, but it costs 40 bucks a month. Worth it though in my opinion. Flash based, so it very portable to many systems.

EDIT: Looks like they are in the midst of a changeover, was hard to find the site. Name change to acrobat connectnow:

http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/

Answer 9

Gobby is a very cool collaborative editor. You can work on a set of files with other people and chat with them.