Reference: www.screenconnect.com

We recently purchased two licenses of this to handle our remote support. I have since installed the "Access" agent on about 75 client machines. This software just rocks. I upgraded 7 desktops and 2 laptops from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 this week all through ScreenConnect.

It is $300 per simultaneous technician needing to be connected for 2-4 and gets as low as $250 per tech when buying 10+.
Pricing: http://www.screenconnect.com/Purchase

Their upgrade pricing is also one of the fairest things I've seen.
Upgrades: http://www.screenconnect.com/Upgrade

Meetings and support sessions all support audio through the app itself (mic/speakers required of course, duh!)

The product has been around since late 2009 going by their press releases. If anyone is in the market for a remote support tool, I will highly recommend it.

@Dashrender said:

I also don't expect the general public to truly understand or care about the hows and whys only that they had to get a new card and deal with the hassles associated with it.

This right here... Most people will see the letters and news and will actually only be upset when they have to go and change all their automated billing and saved CC information on shopping websites.

@pol.darreljade said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@pol.darreljade said:

@ajstringham said:

@pol-darreljade Android wins, hands down.

Ahhh.. Buyers of iOS are more generous than Buyers of Android. haha

That's a great example. I've been talking to people about something related to this all week. If your customers choose you because you are cheap, they won't likely be good customers for other things.

Yes. Indeed.

My boss (owner) and myself will agree with this. That is why he bought me a MacBook Pro instead of a Windows laptop when I need a new laptop. Now just to get off my ass and code something up.

@scottalanmiller said:

@pol.darreljade said:

by the way, @scottalanmiller what time is it there? haha jjust wondering you're still awake.

We just went into "Daylight Savings Time" and I am in the New York City area. So now, and until around October, I will be exactly twelve hours behind you. So it is just after noon there, so it is just after midnight here.

AJ in in Dallas, one hour behind me. So he is thirteen hours off from you at the moment. It is twenty till midnight there.

I was wondering this and was too lazy (can lie and say busy) to check myself. Just one hour off from Japan (GMT+9) which I am used to calculating already.

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

The importance of a start button is that it gives a visual clue. Without it the interface is literally a mystery. All navigation is missing. With it you have some guidance. For normal users that is of incredible importance.

I have to give you that one.

I can agree with this logic. Hidden menu's are bad UI design

@scottalanmiller said:

Yes. They are a bit much. Once they pop up they just stack and stack.

Yeah, i did not see any obvious setting in chrome to control the behavior so I turned it off.

@Dashrender said:

It requires Java? Really?

Pretty much my opinion.

@Maria-Levkina said:

Speaking about maintenance & support, as I know, 1 year is included and later you can renew your subscription, but it's not obligatory.

How much is maintenance? Not find ding it on their website.

@Joyfano said:

@scottalanmiller I hope I can bring more people working in IT -basically from Philippines.. I think it is vital to have a good English spoken. hahah am I talking too much?

Living in the middle of nowhere USA (Near St. Louis Missouri) I think it is important to expose more people to real people from outside the USA. This part of the country is some of the worst outside the deep south for 'Murica attitudes. (reference for 'Murica: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/murica)

I used to listed to S-Words, but they died off as people moved on. They will occasionally pop out a new one. http://www.s-words-podcast.com/
I don't listen to any at the moment.

@NetworkNerd said:

You would do well to look at Enterprise Plus licenses of Veeam to get the WAN Accelerator for backup copy jobs here. I am hoping to try this out in the next 4-8 weeks since we just beefed up internet connections at 2 of our sites.

The is only in the Plus? I may be able to swing the Enterprise, but the plus not so much. This is a SMB with 3 (well will be 2) VM hosts. They like the idea of offsite backup, but $4600 not counting hardware will be pushing it. Does Veeam require maintenance to be repurchased for it? I can probably make a case if it is a one time purchase.

Twin Peaks

Looks like a nice place.

Image from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Peaks_(restaurant_chain)

@scottalanmiller said:

Whitelisting on the SonicWall fixed the issue.

This is not an option at all locations. But this does tell us that something in the system design is being blocked.

@ajstringham said:

3. What is your long-term backup plan?

Depends on a few things. When I talked to Unitrends I got completely run around, AFTER getting Katie involved. It was a completely horrible experience.

That said, I am looking for a solution to handle offsite pushing of the backups so I am basically going to use Veeam or UEB. One thing I have not done with Veeam is actually see how the offsite functionality works. Not enough hours in the day it always seems. UEB was quoting me stupid numbers for backing things up using my own hardware both onsite and offsite, I was not impressed. Where my understanding of Veeam is a $1600 purchase of Essentials to handle 4 sockets (my two servers that i will be keeping) and then I can install the offiste side of that with no extra licensing needed.

@Bill-Kindle said:

So I have a choice between reviewing a ML310e G8 v2 or a ML350e G8 v2 with my choice of LFF drives or SFF drives. The ML350e would be a new system to me, as I'm already familiar with the 310e. The 350e looks HUGE, and possibly loud. BUT, has 2x CPU's instead of 1x.

I'm going to have to sit and think about this one for a few minutes.....

I would assume the 350e is as quiet as all their other servers. Unless it is in your bedroom, you will likely not be bothered by the noise level.

I would go with the standard form factor drives as they are usually cheaper. Obviously, if they will fill it up with 8 to begin with, the SFF would be a good choice

@Dashrender said:

Panda AV did this for me in the past too. This kind of seems to be a small trend. Offices that move to Office 365 with local install Office, the users often find themselves with several licenses worth they can install at home.

This has been decently common in the Business Anti-Virus space for years. Additionally Microsoft has offered Office home use rights for people with service assurance for at least 5 years.

@scottalanmiller said:

Caffeine takes energy from the future to use now. But there is a cost involved, overhead. So while it can help you stay awake, you have to lose that sleep somewhere else plus the overhead. So overall, using caffeine you have more control over when you are tired but are tired more often.

Well this may be true, but I have had so much caffeine in my system for so long, I am not sure what I would be like without it. High school in the late 80's was about dropping vivarin in a Jolt Cola in the morning. Post high school, the 90's was copious amounts of Mt. Dew. In the 00's i dropped soda from my daily life unless I am out someplace, but started Green Tea and Coffee. Now, I am just Coffee and water.

I recently purchased Essentials at a client that had 3 VMWare servers with no VM level backups. Currently just using Veeam Free to create Veeam Zip files weekly until I get everything redone. This is all working well.

Today I received 8 shiny new 1TB drives that I will be installing as a 4TB RAID10 array to replace a 1.5TB RAID5 array (4x500GB disks). I have zero disk space for migration so I am planning to simply shut down the virtual machines on this server, create a final veeam zip of all of them and then shut down the host and yank the drives.

This server had VMWare installed on the RAID5 array, so I am also going to reinstall VMWare to a USB stick.

• Will I have any problem adding the VMWare Essentials License to this host? it will be the 4th time I apply it. Do I need to remove it from the current host first, prior to destroying the current host?
• The host is currently running 5.0. Should I reinstall 5.0, restore my Veeam zips then upgrade to 5.5? Or should I just install 5.5?
• Anything I am not asking that you think I should ask?

@pol.darreljade said:

@Joyfano said:

@pol.darreljade Yes Sir.. you really need. hahahha People here are keep bugging me if they are not able to submit their files

hahahaha! Good thing you're there, You can explain to them whats happening haha

Have you thought about an Amazon EC2 or Azure web instance? I realize that basic web hosting services are extremely cheap while EC2 and Azure can get expensive quickly depending on needs. The problem with basic hosting services is the support when something goes wrong.
Do you need a webhost with servers more local to you? That also makes a difference when looking for solutions.

I have an ex-client that used to use them. Hell I used them for a few years myself for basic hosting back in '02. They were nothing special. Just a run of the mill we hosting provider.