Tired of Waiting on VNC Screen Redraws

[pwhinson]

I've tried both Chicken of the VNC and Jolly's Fast VNC (Jolly's is faster of the two) but still experience slow screen redraws in controlling Itunes from my 1.8ghz single core dual processor G5.

 

There has to be a better way. the laptop is only about 8 feet from the G5. Is there anyway to accomplish this via ethernet? The Apple store folks said no.

 

Now granted, I'm using Tiger on all my macs so I don't have AND the laptop I'm trying to conrol the G5 from is an IBookG4. I have been thinking about buying a 5 user license for Leopard and installing Leopard on everything (can't install snow leopard because it won't run on the G5 and as I recall there may be some issues with drivers and the Lynx card in Snow Leopard). Do you think that "screen sharing" in leopard would be any faster in screen redraws than what I'm experiencing with the various VNC programs? Is the slowless due to the LAN and is it because VNC uses bonjour - i.e. is bonjour the bottleneck?

 

Isn't there anyway I can just "connect" to the G5 and see the screen output of the G5? Suggestions?

 

[souptin]

If you just want to control itunes remotely, there's a program called TuneConnect that might work for you. It's open source (ie free) so you won't lose anything by trying.

 

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/tuneconnect.html

 

On the screen sharing, you may well be right - certainly I have found Apple's own Remote Desktop program to be much faster than CoVNC. However none of the variations have been so slow that I've found them unusable. Perhaps as you say there is some network bottleneck? Maybe some firewall issue, or the two computers are on different subnets?

 

One radical option would be to get yourself a big screen (eg a tv that has a suitable computer input) and wireless keyboard and forget about the laptop as a remote, but I appreciate not everyone likes having this in their listening room. It's great for watching music dvds for example, or if, like me you enjoy the visualizer (either of which are not practical with any vnc variation that I've tried)

 

[Codifus]

The advantage to Redstone's Vine VNC server is that is compresses the video output which it then sends over the network to the client, be it COVNC or Jollyfast. Great for remote connections.

 

Are you using the laptop wirelessly? If so, that would explain the slowness. Wireless G tends to offer 1/4 of the bandwidth of wired 100 BaseT ethernet at best. Also, you should be able to use your connection wired as well with no change in parameters. Just plug n play really.

 

I use Vine for my Desktop to connect remotely and Apple Remote Desktop on my music server since my connections to it are usually local on the LAN;

 

http://www.testplant.com/products/vine_server/

 

CD

 

[pwhinson]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I tried itunesconnect and it works great and fast. It is possible for me to snake an ethernet cable around to my airport extreme which does have extra ethernet ports available so that will be the ideal solutions. Tried it and VNC is virtually instantaneous in controlled the G5.

 

- Paul

 

[poop]

Assuming your laptop is also running OS X why not just use screen sharing? It's part of OS X and works perfectly for me.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Unless I've missed it, there is no OSX "Screen Sharing" viewer with Tiger. The server side is there but you need to use a third party VNC Viewer.

 

I would add I've never found an issue running Chicken of VNC on my Tiger PowerMac G4 to control the Intel Leopard machine that is my music source.

 

Eloise

 

[steve dixon]

i use the go>connect to server>browse>sellect mac mini>screen sharing method of controlling the mac mini via an ibook g4, is it possible to 'auto connect' and run screen sharing when i open the ibook? assuming of course the mac mini is switched on.

 

or how do i add the mac mini to favourites in the server box thereby cutting out the browse step.

 

thanks

steve