TeamViewer-One alternative for LogMeIn Free

One of the major changes in product availability this past 7 to 10 days that has affected me the most has been the loss of the product called LogMeIn free. This product help me out quite a bit as a management tool between my home in my office PCs. I had made a significant personal commitment to this in purchasing mobile tablet versions of LogMeIn Ignition which allowed me to access my PCs using my phone and either android or IOS tablets. So initially I went back to using our internal product called ScreenConnect but it didn't provide the security that I wanted personally so I get back into the pool to look for another solution.

One of the products it had been bandied about in industry postings, was a product called Team Viewer which has a noncommercial free product and is very much like the LogMeIn Free product that I was leaving behind. I was surprised how quick the connection was to access each of my workstations, much faster than LogMeIn Free was. But the actual capabilities of the program shows at the product is not as mature as LogMeIn Free. It does pass through sound and video fairly well with only a slight degradation of the actual video stream and the sound quality is quite good so those two things are both positive. The actual screen display seems a little bit crisper but that might be my own imagination.

I would say that more than 90% of the things that I would possibly need in doing remote support are there so being a free product this makes this a very viable replacement to LogMeIn Free. It has a very nice file transfer function which allows you to move files between the two machines very easily and again amazingly very quickly. The program takes up just shy of 300 K in memory so it does not require too many resources to run in.

The professional version of TeamViewer also includes online meeting and online presentation modes, has a one time fee but still seems a little bit overpriced to me. It does run on Windows, Mac OS, Linux and most phone operating systems. But I'm not sure I would recommend this product over GoToMeeting, GotoMyPC or the professional version of LogMeIn you know they both have continuing costs over the years. I like the broader range of capabilities that are inherent in those products. One aspect to remember is that when you purchase a license of the commercial version of TeamViewer that you don't have to purchase a license for each of the machines that you are attaching to. Those clients are all free.

WebSite to download software

TeamViewer Brochure

“Free” LogMeIn is soon to be discontinued.

LogMeIn has been one of my favorite tools for years and I have been using the Free version for my personal use to connect to all of my PC’s for remote control. Now LogMeIn has pulled the plug on the free version. If you still want to continue using this product you will have to purchase the Pro version that costs $99 a year though there is a discount for the initial purchase to $49 for the first year. If you want some other alternatives take a look at these two Lifehacker articles. Hopefully they will be helpful in determining which direction that you want to go.

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Just as a reminder, if you are one of our customers and your office operation consists of five or more machines, consider our security suite product that includes four security components that every business computer user should consider, antivirus, anti-malware and patch management. The fourth component is the that will interest you if you need remote access to your office machine. LogMeIn Pro is part of this package and when you consider the cost of all the components if purchased separately then our security suite is a pretty sweet deal. Just $5/month/workstation gets you all of this protection. That’s $60/year/workstation, compare that to the just the cost of LogMeIn by itself at around $99 per year plus your antivirus program, plus antimalware. If you want more information on this product please don’t hesitate contacting us at 1-800-640-7506.

Supporting our Client Network Systems

This is the service model that Computer Connections has always focused on and is continually providing the support your company needs every day. Many of you have already taken advantage of our Managed Services Products that provides 24 x7 support for you networked servers but in the last six months we have added a new product line that we think is a great solution for your workstations as well. Our CCI Desktop Plus Security Suite is a great addition to our product line that provides around the clock support for your workstation with Virus Protection (Vipre Enterprise), Malware Protection (Malwarebytes), Remote Access/Management (LogMeIn Pro) and Patch Management for just $5/month per PC.

VIPRE Enterprise combines antivirus, antispyware, anti-rootkit and other technologies into a seamless, tightly-integrated product. Starting with a blank slate, Sunbelt architected VIPRE to incorporate the best ideas for dealing with malware in the most comprehensive, highly efficient manner. The result is a clean, fast, and powerful anti-malware solution designed "by admins for admins".

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware software provides an essential layer of protection that works alongside antivirus programs and is renowned in the industry for its unparalleled ability to detect the behaviors of today's malware and effectively stop it at its source. Malware, also known as malicious software, is one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive threats on the Internet today. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware uses advanced heuristic and behavioral scanning to monitor every process in order to detect, destroy, and prevent malicious processes before they start injecting viruses, spyware, trojans, keyloggers, password stealers, dialers and more. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is available as part of Continuum’s RMM platform and free of charge to Continuum partners.

LogMeIn provides us with a quick method of accessing your system for support and training. It can also be setup for your use to access your machine from home or out of the office as well. This has been a great tool that allows us to quickly connect and perform simple diagnostics and fixes to systems from our offices. This cuts down on the cost of travel, and actual support time that is charged to you for these services.

Patch Management provides security updates that have been tested and approved before they are implemented on your computer. This service along with all of the other updates are done behind the scenes without your intervention. Because these are all script based functions they can be performed in the off-peak hours when you are not using your machines. You have little to no interruption to keep you computer healthy and functioning at its best capability.

Cubby Update…

I received my Cubby invitation today so I loaded it up on my office workstation. I then immediately installed both the Android and IOS versions on my tablets. Just like that I had instant access to the published My Cubby folder. On your desktop you will click on your Cubby program icon and the dialog box that you see on the right will pop up. The wrench at the top of the screen will bring up a new dialog box that shows you your account, allows you to control notifications, and whether you want to start Cubby at startup. It also lets you setup a proxy server if you need to and provides an information screen on the version and links to terms and cubby.com.

You get 5GB’s of space to start with. At the bottom of the initial dialog screen you are shown the current used and available space on your account. If you run your cursor over this area a quick info box appears showing you total cloud capacity, file space used, archive space used and free space available for more storage.

When you add a new folder that you want to share from your machine its location doesn’t move it is just given access to the Cubby application. You can add a folder in a couple of ways. You can drag a folder from an explorer window onto the Dialog Box. You can also right mouse click on the folder in the explorer window and then choose Make this a Cubby Folder.

Once you have chosen a folder to be included as a Cubby Share folder, you can do several things to it. Hover over the folder and you will see 4 icons show up beside the folder. The screen icon gives you control of what devices will sync to the folder you are highlighting. The second icon represents invitations you can send out through email to individuals to share access to the folder. The third icon that appears as a chain (link) allows you to create a public link that you can share from a website, email or other method. The last icon is an “x” and by choosing this option you will delete the link to the folder. Very simple and very straight forward.

I am going to try this out for a couple of weeks. I will report back as to whether I find in more useful than Dropbox or not.

LogMeIn Cubby–is it worth waiting for?

While still available by invite only this product might have some interesting uses. So if it isn’t available to the general public why the big hubbub? They have increased the referral reward program to 1GB, twice that of Dropbox’s and they give you unlimited space for the files that you are sharing between computers. Dropbox limits your storage capacity to initially 2gb’s for the free with a maximum of 16gb’s for your referral rewards. Your initial allotment for cloud storage with Cubby is 5gb’s more than double that of Dropbox and with the sharing of the data between computers, the data that is shared is not included in your cloud capacity. I was thinking to my self that this might be competition for Citrix’s ShareFile product. One nice feature of the Cubby system is that there isn’t an ongoing cost. Citrix is based on bandwidth usage and starts at a cost of $29.95 per month. While this is essentially similar to an FTP service with storage in the cloud it provides a much needed capability of sharing files with others that are larger than what your email transporter service allows. This is something that we run into all of the time. For years I have been telling people about Dropbox for this purpose but this might be and interesting alternative as well.

For more details about this product read the Press Release below.

Press Release:

Since the beta launch of Cubby earlier this year LogMeIn has taken on board a ton of great feedback from fellow Cubbsters and made the cloud service even better. Cubby is the cloud data service to simply and securely share information across PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Android devices, or with other people.

Cubby is the first service built on LogMeIn's very own cloud data sync and storage platform letting people turn any number of PC or Mac folders into 'cubbies' that can be accessed from other devices, stored in the cloud, and shared with colleagues and friends. Cubby also gives people the option to simply share or sync an unlimited amount of information across their devices for free, and without ever counting against cloud storage limits.

So, to celebrate the next phase of the beta LogMeIn's Cubby now offer users:

• New referral reward program – offering at least 2 x the additional free space (twice as much as Dropbox) per referral of any of the cloud sync and store offerings on the market. Cubbsters are given 1GB of additional space every time they refer a friend into Cubby. Simply invite 5 friends and it'll double the free storage you already have (from 5GB to 10GB)
• Unlimited sharing of cubbies – sharing cubbies is half the fun of using Cubby and now LogMeIn allows users to share cubbies with everyone. Share your stuff with friends, family and colleagues alike for everyone to get the full Cubby experience and for easy and remote communication at all times
• Updated iOS app – the improved app is now available from the Apple app store allowing users to open and upload any file on the iPhone or iPad into Cubby. Also, open any Cubby file in other apps, like QuickOffice, Pages, Keynote, Evernote and even Dropbox
• Cubbies noted on desktop, explorer – now any folder that has been turned into a Cubby is marked with a Cubby icon when viewed on the desktop or via explorer to clearly mark cubbified folders