Android It Apps - Part 3: Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)

Image via WikipediaMany times I need to remote into my server or workstation to make changes or check on something (less and less as more and more stuff is either in the cloud or on my phone). I looked around for a preferably free Android app to do this. What I found was mostly junk. There are many apps, but most of them require that you either run something on the computer you are remoting into, or are web interfaces that are somewhat lacking.

I finally settled on Remote RDP Lite 3.0.6. The lite version has some capabilities disabled and allows only one saved connection (with the pay version you can save many RDP connections in the list and just tap on one to connect). But even the lite version is fairly robust. All my computers that allow RDP using port 3389 worked fine with this app.

Any IT professional with an Android device will like this app, and find it very useful.

The other app that is very nice for RDP/VNC is PocketCloud from Wyse. It also will only allow one profile unless you purchase the full version. It has audible feedback and everything is done through the touch screen without a mouse pointer (Remote RDP has a mouse pointer which you move around). I personally found it harder to move around in PocketCloud. A definite pro for the Wyse product is the better GUI and the ability to choose between installing a local client on machines you wish to remote into or not. If you do choose to install the local client the app has the ability to autodiscover.

It is my personal preference, but I find the Remote RDP product easier to use.

Related articles

• Best Free Remote Desktop Applications for iPad (crenk.com)
• The Android Sysadmin: Remote Administration in the Smartphone Age (zdnet.com)
• Remote Desktop App PocketCloud Reaches 250k Users, Updates Android Application (geardiary.com)

AVG Upgrade to 9.0 and the Blue Screen Of Death

Image via Wikipedia

I use AVG anti-virus / anti-malware software, among others, on my work computer. I like to keep everything up to date to make sure my computer doesn't get infected. So when the AVG software popped up a notice saying I could get a free upgrade to version 9 from version 8.5, I went for it - my bad!

AVG is excellent software, don't get me wrong. But when I upgraded to version 9 (which is said to be 6x faster and uses less resources than 8.x), it recommended uninstalling my other software, Symantec AV Corporate edition (which my college requires) and Sophos AV (which I was testing).

Once I uninstalled those pieces of software (this should be done automatically from the installer - I had to remove the software and restart the installer). I restarted the installer which then upgraded my version 8.5 to version 9.00. That's when my problems started.

I was going through the various components (it looked really really good - even had it's own firewall - which turns off windows firewall BTW), when I came upon the Rootkit scanner. I decided to try it out - That's when I got the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD)! I recovered from that and started researching the problem. AVG had some suggestions on their website, which turned out to be okay. Microsoft came back with a message after the error reporting went in that I had a bad driver (hardware or software) on my system.


When I came in this morning - another BSOD awaited me. After recovering from that I saw that a message I sent to AVG tech support was waiting for me in my inbox. I started to answer it when I got another BSOD. I restored my system to an earlier state (before the upgrade) and finished answering the email to AVG then started straitening out my system.

I'm hoping that AVG will be able to solve this quickly, because what I saw of the 9.00 version looked really nice and I like AVG a lot better than the Symantec product we are using here.