Collaboration and Access Tools

Have you ever had the need for a file on your computer that was inaccessible because you either did not have the tools or could not access your computer? If so, this guide is for you. I have spent many hours fighting with various tools, flaky internet connections, oppressive firewalls, and frustrating ISPs (stupid Comcast) to finally reach the zen of long-distance computing.

My quest for the ideal collaboration / remote desktop tool(s) began several years ago while still at college. This was also when I learned how completely controlling and frustrating System Admins could be. To put this in perspective, the System Administrator at my university was particularly untrusting and imperialistic when it came to connecting to computers on campus. My freshman and sophomore years were spent attempting to access my personal computer from the labs using Remote Desktop or VNC, if I was able to connect at all. This quickly moved to my junior year where I learned the hard way about trusted and untrusted zones. I worked for the campus in a zone that was trusted, while the dorms were untrusted. VNC and RDP were no longer viable options. After much searching, a friend suggested the first of the tools in this article, LogMeIn.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn is a company that enables access to any computer that has their software installed; currently there are only OSX and Windows versions available. The service operates over port 80 and is difficult to block. The company offers several different products including:

LogMeIn Free
LogMeIn Pro
LogMeIn Mobile (for smartphones)
And several more

For the purpose of this article, I am only going to focus on LogMeIn Free. The biggest concern when allowing remote access to a computer is security. LogMeIn uses the industry standard AES encryption protocol at 256 bits of encryption as well as randomizes the access URL every time you connect to the computer. There are two levels of password access required as well. The first is your LogMeIn account which allows you to see the computers in your group. The second is the username and password for the computer system itself. LogMeIn does not store the password between sessions for added security.

LogMeIn is easy to install and use as well. During installation it will ask for the username and password of the LogMeIn account to add the system. After installation you just need to login to the site from any computer and you have access. If you want the complete experience you have to install the plugin for the browser you are using. At this time only Firefox and Internet Explorer have the plugin available. However you can still access the computer without the plugin, you just won’t have as much control over how it is displayed. LogMeIn has also released an iPhone app for accessing your computer, but I refuse to pick it up at the current price. My goal is free, not $30. And they refuse to create a compatible web portal on the site, so for now I’m fresh out of luck when on the go.

In my entire time of using LogMeIn I have had relatively few failures. A majority of the time the failures were due to the internet connection at my house bouncing and the LogMeIn software not phoning home properly. I also have yet to see the connection blocked, but it can be done. If an ISP or SysAdmin decides to block LogMeIn it is as simple as blacklisting the entire logmein.com domain. Now LogMeIn is great and I have no major complaints, but it doesn’t include any features for sharing files across. For that I had to go to another website, getdropbox.com

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great solution for a classic problem, how to share files over the internet between different operating systems. The team behind Dropbox wanted it to be truly multi-platform so they developed the software for OSX, Windows and Linux simultaneously. I have only tried it on Windows though, so I cannot say how nice it works on either OSX or Linux.

The software is remarkably light, but is incredibly good. When installing you choose where you want the Dropbox directory placed and the software will create it with two nested sub-directories, Public and Photos. Any images that you place in the Photos directory can be browsed through the internet portal in a nice web interface and any item placed in the Public directory can be shared with whomever you want. I have used this to share numerous files with friends and some of the contributors on this site. Be careful though, Dropbox only gives you 2 GB of storage space.

Dropbox is also so well implemented that every time you drop a file into the directory or modify it, the software updates the changes to the cloud and down to any computer in the share. This is so seamless that I didn’t even notice it updating the changes at first. After you upload a file it is immediately synchronized with all the computers by downloading the file to every other machine. So be warned, if you have uploaded a number of files to the cloud and one of the machines is not online, the moment it goes back online it will start downloading the files.

While this functionality is great, I wanted one unified product that would allow the remote access of LogMeIn and the collaboration and synchronization of Dropbox. I was browsing around the Internet last week and ran across a beta product that looks to provide this for me. Unfortunately at this time it is Windows only, so all of you that refuse to use a Microsoft product will be left out to dry.

Live Mesh Beta

Yes, I said Live. This product is yet another one in the list of services offered by the revamped Live Essentials. That being said, Mesh is incredible. So incredible that I have disabled both LogMeIn and Dropbox because, with the exception of one feature, everything I could do in both can be done in one now.

Installing Mesh is a breeze on Vista or XP, not so much on Windows 7. I finally got it to install, but it took a little bit of hacking the registry to get it to work. Once installed though, no issues. Because it is a beta, some of the features are incomplete or nonexistent, but the ones that work are awesome. After you add a computer to the cloud, you can login to it from any other computer in your Mesh. The direct connect option can be launched from the system tray icon for Mesh. This interface is fairly stable with few connection drops. When the connection does drop though, it usually reconnects with little trouble. The web remote desktop interface is functional as well, but buggy. Each time I attempted it I would either have my theme changed from Aero on the machine I am connecting from or the browser would crash.

The place where Mesh shines though is its interface for sharing files. Unlike Dropbox, there is no defined Public directory to share files from. You define your own directory and then share it by adding another live user through an email invitation. This is not as free as the Dropbox interface, but is nice because you can specify permissions. You can define if the user can only view the items in the directory, add items to the directory or modify / delete items in the directory. This is better than Dropbox because Dropbox only provides complete access to files in the Public directory. In addition to the security settings, Mesh also provides 5 GB of storage.

The Live Desktop web interface is where Mesh really shows its elegance and functionality. When launched in the browser an Active-X control is activated that creates a virtual desktop in the browser. You can double-click the icons to open them in a stripped down Explorer interface. Right clicking provides contextual options and, when enabled, you can drag files from your computer into the web interface to upload them. If you have any pictures uploaded, you can view them in a gallery and videos will be played in a stream. Words cannot do this interface justice; it is simply amazing what Microsoft has created.

Final Thoughts

Each of these tools has it pros and cons. LogMeIn has the support of a company behind it while Dropbox is designed to work for as many people as possible and Live Mesh is not cross platform at all. I have only looked at the three tools that I have the most experience with. I am quite sure there are many others out there that you use and swear by. Feel free to comment about them and I will investigate as time permits. Just be forewarned, it will take a lot to pull me away from Mesh. I have drunk the Microsoft Kool-Aid and it is good.

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