Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Flame the author     In this article Introduction NetSupport Manager 7.0 CrossTec Corp. NetOp Remote Control 7.01 Symantec Corp. pcAnywhere 10.5 Other Products Reviewed Executive Summary How We Tested Report Card, Part I Report Card, Part II

Although it doesn't support LDAP or NTLM and is not a component of an enterprise desktop-management suite, NetSupport Manager is a comprehensive remote-control solution that can be centrally deployed and managed in the enterprise. NetSupport ranked fourth in transferring bitmaps and sixth in file transfers. These scores, together with the full range of remote-control features and a competitive price, put it ahead of CrossTec's NetOp Remote Control and Symantec's pcAnywhere.

NetSupport has two main code components, the control (master) and the client (host). The control and the client code can reside on the same machine. In addition to a straightforward CD installation, NetSupport offers a network-installation method in which setup, license and configuration files are copied onto a central server. Users can browse to this directory and execute the setup file.

We were impressed with the NetSupport Deploy Utility, which lets network administrators push install NetSupport onto workstations without any host interaction. In addition, the utility can update license information and client configurations and even uninstall the package remotely. The utility gave us a list of available networks along with domain and workgroup information. We selected the host onto which we wanted to install the package and the necessary configuration files, then clicked "deploy" and the package was installed. Deploy Utility also gave us a detailed report of successful and failed deployments.