Mac OS X  |  Networking/Administrator  |  Timbuktu Pro

I've tried several flavors of VNC and Apple's Remote Desktop, and Timbuktu's remote control is faster and more stable. I've used it to control servers around the country and to access my own machine at home when I am on the road. Timbuktu seems especially good over slower connections and it is easy to customize it to run over various ports (good if you have a router). It also has much better security then any other the others (built-in SSH is nice).

My only complain is, yeah, it is expensive, but if you use remote control frequently for real world work, there's no substitute.

I don't know how many folks find these "new features" useful, but I'm not one of them. It's amazing that Netopia has the balls to charge 50% of the retail price as an upgrade fee. They must be learning tricks from Adobe, or something.

Look...if you're a first-time user, don't let my comment about the price influence you. There's no question that Timbuktu is the best in its class. I use Chicken of the VNC and OSXvnc, so I know that stable, reliable freeware options exist, but Timbuktu is faster, smoother, better, and offers lots more options. It's well worth the cost of a license -- well, OK...two licenses, because you need to run it on at least two machines -- assuming you need all its features.

I believe in supporting the continuing development of good software, but I don't believe in throwing money away for software whose "new features" I don't need and can't use. I'd pay 25% or even 33% of retail as an upgrade fee just to support Timbuktu's continuing development--even if I didn't need the "new features"--but 50% is ridiculous. And Netopia gets you by the short hairs on this; Timbuktu has no Tiger compatibility with any version earlier than 8.1.1.

I wonder how they figure out their price points. I assume they figure that they can't make enough money at, say, a 33% upgrade fee with the probable number of upgrades they'll get, so they raise it to 50% and hope that it covers the reduced number of upgrades at that rate. I dunno...it's their product and their company, so they can charge whatever they want, but they've just lost me. I'm not shelling out bucks to these jerks, who are showing up with their hands out just because I upgraded my system to v10.4.

Sorry, Netopia. You're not the only game in town for remote control, and forcing your customers to pay your exorbitant upgrade fees for a system upgrade isn't the kind of behavior that deserves my market support. I'd rather send some money to the freeware developers.