I was looking for a way to access my Windows XP Home Machine, which I use less and less, from my Mac. As previously reported, a KVM solution made by Belkin looked very good to me.
But while I was browsing some bulletin boards on the topic, somebody mentioned UltraVNC, the remote viewable software solution. I had previously tried WinVNC (now called RealVNCand TightVNC) but their performance over my local netwerk (100 Mbit) was very slow.
UltraVNC, however, is completely different. Very slick and polished, and when you install the mirror video driver (without any problems whatsoever, except a reboot) performance really skyrockets – it’s like you are really sitting in front of your computer, the response speed is so good as to be almost the same as normal !
As long as you use the normal vnc login method, it’s compatible with other VNC clients so I can connect using Chicken of VNC or any other mac VNC client.
Next up to try : playing a game under it (Putt-Putt saves the zoo for the connaisseurs) that Tom adores. If that works, I don’t need to buy the Belkin KVM anymore… Heck, I’ll try and play CounterStrike, though I don’t hold up much hope for that though… 🙂
Update : playing a game like a childrens game is not really bareable, everything flickers. Playing a video actually works, but it is very choppy. So I guess I’ll need a KVM after all.
One reply on “UltraVNC or a cheap software KVM switch”
[…] Sure, I did install ultra-vnc on my pc, so I could fire up Chicken of VNC and get to my pc using my Mac’s screen and use it for simple tasks like Active Sync and Word processing, and it does that Very Well. But it doesn’t show very good video and it goes haywire when you want play games, even simple ones. And my son is asking more and more to play a game on our pc so I am spending more and more time switching cables. […]