A Good, Free screen sharing program for pair programming?

Question

I am looking for a good, free (preferred) screen sharing program that works well for pair programming and code review sessions for Windows (Vista x64, Server 2008). It should allow either person take control of the screen and be fairly responsive for text editing over decent broadband connections. Additional features like the ability to draw/mark/annotate the other persons screen would be nice.

Edit: This will be used by developers in remote locations.

Answer 1

I haven't actually tried it yet, but it looks promising. Check out DimDim. They have a free web service and a VMWare image on Sourceforge.

Answer 2

Windows Shared View works for me. It allows you to only share certain windows and even shows where your "attendees" mouse is. It would be best to use that in connection with some sort of voip connection so that you don't have to type questions/responses back and forth.

Answer 3

Would a VNC client not do the trick, combined with a one of those screen overlay apps people use for presentations (screenpen rings a bell)?

Answer 4

Do you need this to be remote? You could just have two monitors set to mirror and 2 USB keyboards/mice

If it is remote then VNC is the way to go, I would use UltraVNC if you are looking for a free version, it has more features (chat, file transfer) than the free version of VNC - it also has a video driver hook that means it suffers less from any weird screen issues than regualr VNC.
If firewalls are a problem you can simply set up a VPN (which is probably a good idea anyway - although ultra can do encryption).

Answer 5

Try Mikogo at www.mikogo.com

very easy to setup. no problems with Firewalls etc etc

Answer 6

Another option is to use VNC, but use reverse connections. Have a look at this I use this in conjunction with No-IP to get a fixed address.

Answer 7

And my final suggestion, but this is not one I've tried. Go to Crossloop

Answer 8

How about any of the services like Joel's https://www.copilot.com/?

Answer 9

Have you looked at the collaboration module that comes with netbeans? Its very useful for pair programming!

Answer 10

If you're using eclipse, you might wanna try ECF. There's a video presentation available here.

Answer 11

On OSX, I've used vim and a multi-user GNU screen session - this gives much better responsiveness than VNC, screen-sharing, etc. I guess you could use these with Cygwin?

Answer 12

TeamViewer from http://www.teamviewer.com/ works very well. We use it for pair programming between London and Ukraine.

Notes:

1. We use Skype for voice.
2. TeamViewer uses extremely low bandwidth - 4kbyte/sec on average for programming in Visual Studio 2008 @ 1024x768 resolution.
3. Can swap roles from hotseat to viewer with a button.
4. The remote view of the screen can be resized to fit in a smaller area with no loss in usability.