Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect
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We've started the long process of moving from ScreenConnect to MeshCentral. We will run them side by side for a long time, as they work fine in tandem. But out game plan is to get our production migrated as "quickly as reasonable" and then move our SC hosting from costly production to the lab and keep it purely as a "backup" system until such time as we are forced to retire it based on licensing. It'll just age out till then.
But my guess is that it will take about a month and from the looks of it, we will just be moved over to MC and won't sign into SC for a very, very long time and mostly just forget about it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Remote Printing
ScreenConnect has a remote printing feature. Not everyone finds this feature necessary. It can be a little annoying at times when you go to print and have a crazy amount of printers to choose from. However, a lot of our remote users need this feature.
Is this because you are using SC as a sort of VDI tool, rather than as a support mechanism? That's a neat feature, but not one I was even aware that we had
Correct. Some employees, accountants, work remotely by connecting to their desktop in the office. Remote printing is a must for them. For me I keep a handful of clients on ScreenConnect for quick access.
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@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Remote Printing
ScreenConnect has a remote printing feature. Not everyone finds this feature necessary. It can be a little annoying at times when you go to print and have a crazy amount of printers to choose from. However, a lot of our remote users need this feature.
Is this because you are using SC as a sort of VDI tool, rather than as a support mechanism? That's a neat feature, but not one I was even aware that we had
Correct. Some employees, accountants, work remotely by connecting to their desktop in the office. Remote printing is a must for them. For me I keep a handful of clients on ScreenConnect for quick access.
Yeah, very different workload. SC is definitely better, IMHO, for that. Way more like a VDI system. MC feels more like a support mechanism.
Obviously those are "look and feel" things, not technical functionality. But I think you know what I mean.
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@scottalanmiller That was fast...getting rid of SC like a bad habit!
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For remote users, SC's "pop out dedicated screen" stuff is perfect. But for support techs, it's not necessary. MC's lightning fast in browser system is better, at least for me, doing support tasks. Doesn't look as "pretty", but is faster and more functional for getting support tasks done.
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@FATeknollogee said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@scottalanmiller That was fast...getting rid of SC like a bad habit!
Our license was approaching renewal and we've been essentially searching for MeshCentral for two years. We've talked to other vendors in the last few months and just could not find that magic solution to make replacing SC really make sense. SplashTop was the most likely contender, mostly because we know the CTO.
But MC is dead on what we need in nearly every way. It's exactly what I want my tool to be like, with exactly the licensing that I want. It's the open source product that we kept saying "why has no one made this yet?" And finally they did!
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I think that SC, if we work out the licensing, costs us ~$19/tech/mo. That's a sizeable tooling cost.
MC appears to work out to around ~$1/tech/mo.
Now that is just licensing and hosting costs, not support. No idea what SC and MC support costs are, but so far, MC uses a lot less than SC from what I can tell. Not that SC uses much, but I've worked on it for other companies and have seen it blossom into a world of support problems. MC might do that too, of course, but SC's issues were caused by whole categories of things that MC doesn't have. Unlike SC which requires code, licensing and other management, MC is self updating and has no licensing to maintain.
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Where are you running your MC instance, cloud or co-lo?
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@FATeknollogee said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Where are you running your MC instance, cloud or co-lo?
Vultr Cloud
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$5 instance, Ubuntu 18.10. 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, 2GB Swap. CPU is not taxed, RAM is barely touched, swap is unused.
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:thumbs_up:
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I assume the answer is yes, but can MC have multiple techs view the same system at the same time?
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@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
I assume the answer is yes, but can MC have multiple techs view the same system at the same time?
I'm pretty sure that we tested that, but I'll try to verify in the morning. Don't want to recall someone to their desk at this time just to test that.
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@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@syko24 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Remote Printing
ScreenConnect has a remote printing feature. Not everyone finds this feature necessary. It can be a little annoying at times when you go to print and have a crazy amount of printers to choose from. However, a lot of our remote users need this feature.
Is this because you are using SC as a sort of VDI tool, rather than as a support mechanism? That's a neat feature, but not one I was even aware that we had
Correct. Some employees, accountants, work remotely by connecting to their desktop in the office. Remote printing is a must for them. For me I keep a handful of clients on ScreenConnect for quick access.
We have systems like this internally, we use NX for that, though. So no need to have MC handle it. We had already found NX to be nicer than SC for that particular need. We have MC on the NX machines now to do support of the VDI instances that use NX, though.
We have customers that use SC like you do, though.
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I'm using both side by side right now while doing some work, and it is very noticeable how much faster and simpler it is to connect to a remote session in MC over SC. I can initiate the session in SC, then go to MC, navigate to the machine, open a session and have it up before SC gets one up. Must cut the initiation time in half. It's only seconds, but those seconds equal frustration for a tech trying to assist someone. And they add up when you do this all day long.
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Did you install per Section 4.8 (p 19 of 25) of http://info.meshcentral.com/downloads/MeshCentral2/MeshCentral2InstallGuide.pdf
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@FATeknollogee said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Did you install per Section 4.8 (p 19 of 25) of http://info.meshcentral.com/downloads/MeshCentral2/MeshCentral2InstallGuide.pdf
No, I don't believe that that guide was online at the time. Most of their links were dead when I was installing.
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Found a pretty major short coming. So far I can't get MC agents to install on older Windows. I have SC on systems going back to XP (but can't install on 2000). But so far, MC won't install on 2000, XP, 2003, 2003 R2 at all. And on 2008 it installs but does not appear to connect.
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@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Found a pretty major short coming. So far I can't get MC agents to install on older Windows. I have SC on systems going back to XP (but can't install on 2000). But so far, MC won't install on 2000, XP, 2003, 2003 R2 at all. And on 2008 it installs but does not appear to connect.
For something this new, supporting outdated OS makes no sense.
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@black3dynamite said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:
Found a pretty major short coming. So far I can't get MC agents to install on older Windows. I have SC on systems going back to XP (but can't install on 2000). But so far, MC won't install on 2000, XP, 2003, 2003 R2 at all. And on 2008 it installs but does not appear to connect.
For something this new, supporting outdated OS makes no sense.
While I understand that - unless adding that support is really taxing, not having it for a support tool seems like leaving something pretty big out of the tool.
