Good remote tech support solution

I've been looking for a decent remote assistance product that works on windows and mac lately. I always was proud of having a personal touch, but I recently moved further away from most of my clients and instead of a 1/2 minute drive or 5 minute walk during nice days, it's a 30 minute drive into town. For the basic, "I can't print from my laptop!!, OMG AHHHH!" I don't want to waste the drive time.

Anyway, I use and like LogMeIn Free for a lot of my needs and I did try the free trial of the LogMeIn rescue but at over $1200 a year, it's way too obscenely bloody expensive beyond any and all belief. GoToAssist is only $700 a year, but I was looking for more along the lines of as close to free as possible if not free.

So, I know I haven't been around lately and I used to be addicted to Ozzu. However, when I'm stumped I still come here. All I can say is I got married, free time has been short.

What's wrong with Remote Desktop for Windows. It's already there, so it doesn't cost anything. I don't know anything about Macs.

The problem I see with remote desktop I can give by example. If I use remote desktop from home I can only access my primary DC without doing a lot of outside inside port translation on my firewall which I don't like doing for security reasons. In a sense the same kind of thing is going to apply to small business networks or home situations where computers are often behind a router. Even if you set up port forwarding on the router you still have to maintain current outside IP addresses, which in most cases are going to be dynamic (although with broadband and dsl they tend to remain pretty consistent for long periods). If you don't mind doing all the port forwarding and maintaining a log of IP addresses, ultravnc works pretty well, but it has it's limitations.

I've only used GoToAssist once when I was working with a friend to help set up some video streaming, but I absolutely loved it. He uses it religiously for the customer support his business provides. I suppose you'd have to balance out the savings it could potentially bring in reduced travel time and expenses, but my guess is that it would probably be worth $700 a year for that reason alone.

Take a look at Crossloop. I have used it a few times to help out family and friends. It requires both you and the client to have it installed. The client launches the app, gives you their access key, you enter in the access key and connect. This gives the client a sense of security since you just can't login whenever you feel like it, they have to be there to give you the access key.

http://www.crossloop.com

There is a free version and of course subscription based solutions.

A free help desk software we used, which has the features in Back-end, front-end and email synchronization and Ticket assignment logic Customer self-service system: Have the helpdesk system which is to be the last insurance to help your customers to combat the problems. However, no one wants to wait for your reply if there is any chance to get the answer. So at higher priority, the customers should search their answers from the knowledgebase and articles you have prepared already. This must be designed intelligently and functionally. More information you can check out iKode Helpdesk X.

What ever happened to Team Viewer, been using it for years for my remote support and it works wonders on any connections on either end. I can even remote into my computer from my iPhone, PSP along with other computers.