Remote desktop control from your internet enabled Pocket PC is one of those "How did I ever live without it" applications. The possibilities are really quite endless. Imagine being able to perform serious number crunching or compiling software on your Pocket PC. Forgot your proposal back at the house? No problem. Need a fully featured web browser with Java and multiple tabs? Easy. I'm InTouch software, from Ontario based 01 Communique allows you all the functionality of a host desktop computer through your internet enabled Pocket PC. Of course it also allows you limited connectivity via a web enabled smartphone, and full connectivity through any internet connected computer.
This all sounds good on paper, but how easy is it to really control your desktop from a Pocket PC? And why use I'm InTouch instead of other similar utilities such as Terminal Services? Let's find out.
I'm InTouch Desktop Edition v5.0, is the latest offering from 01 Communique. The major new features added with this release include support for Pocket PCs, and also allows local printing of documents that are on the host computer. This feature enables you to print documents locally without needing a locally installed version of say, Visio, AutoCAD etc.
Setup is straightforward. First, you download a small installer application. After running it, it asks some basic configuration questions, and then downloads the rest of the program from 01 Communique. During installation, you select the mail application that I'm InTouch will monitor (Outlook, or Outlook Express). Then you give your computer a unique name, login, and password that you will use each time you wish to connect.
After you set up this basic information, you are prompted for a second "Desktop Viewer Authentication" password. I'm InTouch recommends that this be different from your login password for added security. At the end of this process, I'm InTouch automatically loads the configuration window, and allows you to make any necessary configuration changes.
I ran into one well documented issue during installation. I'm InTouch installs a file named rdesktop.exe. This file apparently has matching heuristics with some trojan or back-door viruses, and thus triggers a virus alert. Now depending on your anti-virus software, the file may be moved to quarantine, which aborted my installation half way through. My only option to successfully install the application was to completely disable my anti-virus software during installation, and then re-enable it afterwards.
The I'm InTouch web site has instructions on how to ignore the rdesktop.exe file for most major anti-virus vendors, however, my particular software does not allow me to ignore an obvious "threat," and as a result I receive notification about once a day that I have a virus.
I'll take a look at each one of these, as it pertains to the Pocket PC, but be aware that all of this functionality is available from any internet connected computer, often with more feature rich interfaces and without the limitations of the Pocket PC's small screen.
I'm InTouch installs a task bar client and runs two instances of apache.exe, which I'm assuming is the Apache Web Server, on your host computer. Together, these services weighed in at a hefty 27MB of RAM. The task bar client serves as access to the configuration of the application, and also maintains "Registration" with the central I'm in Touch servers. In this way, I'm in Touch allows you to connect with your computer, even over a dynamic IP address.
Also important to note, is that no passwords are stored on the I'm InTouch servers. They are all stored locally on your host machine, which provides you with complete privacy from I'm InTouch, and all communication takes place over a 128 bit secured connection.
This is really the key feature for I'm InTouch software. It provides you with full control of your host computer's desktop through your Pocket PC, almost as if you were sitting in front of your computer. This opens up a whole new realm of uses for your Pocket PC. For instance, you can use any IM client, start and stop servers, visit Flash or AJAX heavy web sites, access your network files at work, and even play turn based games like Civilization. Clearly, applications that require sound are not currently supported, and applications that have frequent, full screen updates (full motion video, and some games) become a little painful over a slower data connection.
So how does this all work? First you need to log in to the I'm InTouch server by either visiting http://www.locator.01com.com/ (the extra "com" is not a typo) in your Pocket PC's browser, or selecting the I'm InTouch icon. After typing in your unique computer name, you're prompted to login in to either a remote desktop session, or access some of the other functionality. For now, we'll control my desktop.
After your initial login, you're prompted to download a 40KB client file. It would be nice if you only had to do this once per device, however downloading this file generally takes 10 seconds or less, depending on your connection.
Next, the desktop viewer is loaded, and you're prompted for the remote desktop viewing password you established during setup. After an authentication period, I'm InTouch loads your desktop. Of course, my desktop is usually locked, so I need to login again to my desktop.
It seems like this is a lot to go through each time you want to view your desktop. My very non-scientific experiment showed that it took me 3 minutes from initial button press to full desktop viewing. Of course, your connection speed has a large impact on this time, and with the roll-out of EVDO and other high speed wireless technologies, this would be a negligible process. However, I felt that 3 minutes was a small price to pay for full desktop access. Note that this longer login process is only necessary for the full desktop control. Other features are available after the first login screen.
This menu provides for all of the options you need while using your remote desktop. You can pin this menu, zoom the desktop 5 different levels from Fit to Screen to 100%, switch between landscape and portrait mode, use an on screen keyboard, and send Ctrl-Alt-Del etc.
Performance depends greatly on the speed of your connection, and to a lesser extent, on power of your Pocket PC. With my cell phone provider, I found that I needed to issue a command, and then wait a few seconds for the screen to refresh. By doing this, I avoided queuing up several commands that ended up tapping buttons that no longer existed etc.
While the remote desktop control is certainly the most powerful feature of I'm InTouch, the software also provides a number of text based features that work for most smartphones with a web browser. These include checking email, calendar, and contacts, in addition to file transfer and browsing. You can either select a specific function at your initial login, or you can navigate to the following home page which provides access to all of the functions.
The file transfer and browsing feature enables you to view all drives attached to your computer, including network drives, CD-ROMs and even virtual drives. Because it's text based, the performance while browsing is good, however in large directories, navigating through "page 25 of 73" can become tedious. Fortunately, I'm InTouch provides you with a find feature that searches the local directory and makes this process a lot easier.
You can either download files to your device, or you can attach the file to an email and send it to a more easily accessible location. Note that all file transfers must first go from your host PC to 01 Communique's servers, and then from 01 Communique to your local device. So while grabbing that spreadsheet you forgot is easy, transferring your 500MB backup file is not. The major limitation of the file transfer feature is that you can only transfer one file at a time, and you cannot transfer folders. Although in a pinch, you can browse back to the desktop, zip up the files you need, and then transfer the zip file.
I'm InTouch provides access to your Outlook or Outlook Express email, but it doesn't currently support other email clients. Of course you can use any client you want while remote controlling your desktop. However while using this text based interface your options are more limited. This feature provides all the email functionality you would expect: Reply, Forward, Attachments (from host computer), Delete etc.
With the contact and calendar management you can create, view, and edit existing contacts and calendar appointments, although in most cases I'd assume this information would already be on your Pocket PC in a more user friendly format. However if you were keeping your work and personal contacts separate, or hadn't recently synced your devices, this would definitely be useful.
Notice that the month based calendar makes use of the horizontal scroll bar, and extends out for other days of the week. It also conveniently bolds dates on which you have an appointment.
I'm InTouch's wireless email notification allows you to monitor one or more Outlook or Outlook Express based email accounts, and send a notification to an email address of your choice, (e.g. your mobile phone's email address) when you receive a message.
Remote printing enables you to print a document from your host computer, on the local computer, without having any particular software installed. Thus you can print proprietary reports, blueprints, or even music scores without having those large (and expensive) software packages installed locally. Now here's the catch. You must have the appropriate printer driver installed on the host computer to do this. This makes it slightly less practical to do this unless you consistently print work documents at home, or vice versa. However with enough time, you could remotely install the needed drivers on the host computer via remote desktop control.
The guest access feature allows up to 10 other people to view your desktop, which enables you to host your own web conferences. These guest accounts can each have different access levels, and would need to be disabled after a conference.
Now you might be asking yourself how this compares to Terminal Services. The answer, is that while Terminal Services and I'm InTouch both allow you to control the desktop, I'm InTouch provides many distinct advantages.
Most importantly, viewing and controlling your desktop via I'm InTouch is much easier. The I'm InTouch zoom controls enable you to see more of the screen when you need to, and achieve a level of balance not possible with Terminal Services. I'm InTouch also presents your entire desktop, at its current resolution, whereas Terminal Services resizes your desktop, possibly reconfiguring your icons, changing window sizes, and generally making life more difficult. In addition, the Terminal Services client redraws your screen as you scroll around, while I'm InTouch loads the entire screen at once. Finally, the quality of the graphics on the remote display are much higher with I'm InTouch.
Now with all of that said, Terminal Services has two advantages. First, it's already installed on your Pocket PC, and it would work in a pinch (assuming you knew your IP address, and had Remote Desktop enabled on your host). Second, the technology used to transfer your desktop to the remote device is fundamentally different than I'm InTouch, and it's a little faster over a slow mobile connection.
This is cache, read story here
