Site: https://www.teamviewer.com
Rating: Fair

• Features – 4/5 (good set of features)
• Pricing – 3/5 (not the cheapest, but not the most expensive)
• Ease of setup – 4/5 (one of the easiest to setup/instruct on use)
• Address book – 4/5 (base license has 200 managed devices)
• Customization – 5/5 (easy to customize and deploy clients)

This review was done on 2021-02-06. More details may be added later on. This was a quick writeup and solely based on my usage of the product.

TeamViewer is somewhat of a household name when it comes to remote support. It is by far the most popular remote assistance/support tool on the market. There have been changes made to the program and licensing through the years, but it remains #1.

I will copy/paste the details about the forced obsolescence (with some modifications) and then we’ll move on to more details about the program.

TeamViewer Forced Obsolescence Story

In the past people figured out that using TV5 would mean less ads and more connection times. This somewhat circumvented the licensing issue where it couldn’t be used in commercial environments.

As a Jamaican I can only speak about what I saw here, but I believe the same thing was being done elsewhere. At the time that I purchased my TV11 license there were other individuals and companies still using TV5. This was disturbing because I’m a single tech that made the sacrifice to buy the license while large companies would still use these workarounds for their workforce. I’m talking about well established local software vendors with multiple employees – and they support multiple clients island-wide. Since my license allowed me to connect to all versions below 11, I had no problems doing the connection. I did however take issue with the fact that some newer features would be missing, but as I was the secondary support person I left their installed software version alone.

To protect their intellectual property, the company made changes to their software to prevent connections to/from older versions. This move was good in keeping with the SaaS type of move, but bad for persons like me.

What would happen is this. Let’s say TV15 is the current version (as of 2021-02-05). If you tried to connect to TV5 it would tell you that the connection is not possible – you would need to upgrade. This will also happen if you try to connect to older versions (I believe 2 or more versions behind) than whatever is most current. Any attempts to use an old version (more than 2 versions behind) will result in an error. This forces all persons to be up to date.

Please note that this applies only to free versions. If you’re connecting from TV15 free to any older version paid – it will allow the connection. If you’re connecting from TV11 paid to any free version then you’ll get an upgrade message.

So I had purchased a perpetual license before they moved to a SaaS based model – where you have to pay a subscription fee yearly. This was for TV11, and I had it setup at ALL of my clients. These clients also needed access to their systems, so they would use TV as well – but less than two months after my purchase, they released TV12. I asked for a discount considering the VERY recent purchase – I was given a coupon for less than 10%. That aside, my clients were then forced – somewhere between TV12 and TV13 – to upgrade their software in order to connect to their devices. This then locked me out with my licensed older version. No warning, newsletter, notice or heads-up of any kind was given. I foud out the hard way. This is the reason I only use my licensed product if I have no other choice and moved to finding other solutions.

Back On Track – TV Features & Usage

So. After ranting above a bit, let’s get back to the things you can do with TeamViewer.

Remote Connections

The staple of these type of applications is to be able to connect to a remote device. This is possible on Windows and Mac desktop/laptop platforms – and in more recent times, Android and iOS mobile platforms as well.

The software uses a number with a password combination (ID and PW) which is randomly generated. I assume the ID is based on some hardware components plus available numbers. The password is randomly generated, but you can specify a static password in the settings.

Remote control is available so that a more knowledgeable person can assist a friend, family member or client to get through an issue. From technical troubleshooting and resolution to just helping someone find a feature in a program, the remote access/control/support feature is the primary use of TeamViewer and any other remote application.

Meetings

TeamViewer allows you to host meetings where someone can be the presenter sharing their screen. I’m not sure if there’s a limit to the number of participants, but this may be dependent on your license type. This is a great feature as it allows you to organize demonstrations for clients, workers, colleagues and others.

Address Book

While a staple with TeamViewer, not every remote application gives you a large enough address book. The smallest subscription starts at 200 devices – which is more than enough for some persons. That means you can have that many devices in your address book but still connect to any other client using the other avenues – including quick support and direct ID/PW.

Annotations

TeamViewer allows you to guide users on how to do tasks by using drawings/annotations on screen. This lets you draw boxes, lines, arrows and such to show users what to click and where to go. Having persons perform the task instead of doing it for them will help them to remember the steps.

Screenshots

Adding to the annotations, you can take screenshots and then send back to the client as reminders of what steps they should take. This can also be done for auditing of what was done.

Recording

TeamViewer supports session recording so that you have a video record of exactly what was done. This is done using a proprietary video codec that is then played back through the program. You can then export it or record it using another application.

Auditing

In cases where there are clients concerned about security, there are logs available in three areas.

• The supporter system (the one giving assistance).
• The supported system (the one getting help).
• The web control panel.

You will always be able to find who was connected and when.

The Bad Side

Aside from the change in business model and miniscule discount offered when I had recently purchased the software – I have no other issues with the company. The stance taken to push persons towards the new business model was not appreciated either, but it doesn’t take from the fact that their software is one of the best on the market.

There is – however – a cautionary note for all remote tool users. MSPs (Managed Service Providers) have been attacked by hackers, and scammers have used the tools to gain access to systems. Regardless of the tool – TeamViewer or otherwise – please ensure you thoroughly check out who is providing support. Never grant access to anyone that you haven’t confirmed is supposed to have access.

Conclusion

TeamViewer is a trusted name in the business. Their product is stable but does not support older systems. The pricing is workable for medium to large business use cases – smaller businesses or individuals may have issues with the licensing. The current business model is workable if you’ve not experienced the changes during transition. If you need something that works and is well known – this is your tool. If you support older systems (including Windows XP – yes, people still use that) then you may need another tool. If you purchased a perpetual license previously, then the issue would be granting clients access to their machines remotely if that is needed.

Subscribe if you want to their service, but ensure you do research beforehand.

So I’ve been doing this IT thing for a while. Remote support has been a thing for a LONG time, but it’s become more necessary and relevant now. I’m going to run through a few different remote tools so that everyone can be aware of the various options available.

This post may be updated at a later point. I will also be adding a more in-depth review of each item.

Original post date is 2021-02-05.
Current update is on 2021-02-06.

You may realize that I have (or had) links to some of these on my website. I have used both free and paid versions of many of these solutions, and here I will give my take on each one in no specific order. Please note that I will be abbreviating most of the items – so TeamViewer will become TV, ScreenConnect will become SC, AnyDesk will become AD and so on.

Please note that as usual – this is a personal blog. There are no facts here – just the opinions of the writer. If my opinions offend you then that’s not the intention. Simply get in touch and we can privately (or publicly) hash things out. It’s kinda sad that we’ve got to do disclaimers like that now. The world has become so touchy over every little thing. Anyways – let’s get to it.

TeamViewer

Site: https://www.teamviewer.com
Rating: Fair
Review: https://carlosthomas.net/blog/2021/02/teamviewer-review/

This is by far the most popular remote assistance/support tool on the market. There have been changes made to the program and licensing through the years, but it remains #1.

The features of TV are really great. The support is awesome – for getting replies about your issues – and the software updates VERY fast. From a usage perspective here are the pros and cons.

PROS:

• Well known and trusted.
• Quick updates.

CONS:

• Forced obsolescence.

I really have no other issues with TV outside of this. But again – this is from a personal experience standpoint. I’ll explain all of that in a minute.

TeamViewer Forced Obsolescence Story

So here’s the thing. In the past people figured out that using TV5 would mean less ads and more connection times. This circumvented the licensing issue where it couldn’t be used in commercial environments.

To protect their intellectual property, the company made changes to their software to prevent connections to/from older versions.

What would happen is this. Let’s say TV15 is the current version (as of 2021-02-05). If you tried to connect to TV5 it would tell you that the connection is not possible – you would need to upgrade. This will also happen if you try to connect to older versions (I believe 2 or more versions behind) than whatever is most current. Any attempts to use an old version (more than 2 versions behind) will result in an error. This forces all persons to be up to date.

So I had purchased a perpetual license before they moved to a SaaS based model – where you have to pay a subscription fee yearly. This was for TV11, and I had it setup at ALL of my clients. These clients also needed access to their systems, so they would use TV as well – but less than two months after my purchase, they released TV12. I asked for a discount considering the VERY recent purchase – I was given a coupon for less than 10%. That aside, my clients were then forced – somewhere between TV12 and TV13 – to upgrade their software in order to connect to their devices. This then locked me out with my licensed older version. No warning, newsletter, notice or heads-up of any kind was given. I foud out the hard way. This is the reason I only use my licensed product if I have no other choice and moved to finding other solutions.

AnyDesk

Site: https://anydesk.com
Rating: Good

This is currently the #2 and hailing from Germany as well – I believe that TeamViewer also started in Germany. AnyDesk is very quickly stealing the spotlight as the go-to software for remote support. The software evolves quickly and the pricing is at about 40% less than TeamViewer.

The features that are in AnyDesk have not fully matured – but all the things you need to get going are there. The best thing? You can run without requiring elevated privileges – so support can be provided to persons with limited credentials.

Issues with AD would be some differences with operation on mobile – versus what I’m accustomed to on others. I expect things to evolve and more features to be added later on.

ScreenConnect

Site: https://www.connectwise.com/platform/unified-management/control
Rating: Excellent

While not as popular as the others, this has FAR more features than any other remote tool on the market. The ONLY issues that I have with SC would be pricing and mouse usage from the mobile platform. There is no other remote app that gives you the level of control and set of features that this does.

• Shows connected device details including make/model/serial.
• 2FA.
• Can store user passwords so you don’t need to remember them.
• Can issue a “GUEST PASS” to have a friend/colleague assist with support if you’re driving or otherwise indisposed.
• Can send clipboard keystrokes.
• Lists and numbers all devices.

There is nothing else on the market that has the features available in ScreenConnect. And it also supports month-to-month payments which I’ve not seen any other company do.

RemoteUtilities

Site: https://www.remoteutilities.com
Rating: Good

While not as popular as the others, RU is something that I’d recommend to EVERY starting technical person that has to do remote support.

RU is one of the (very) few tools that still has a perpetual licensing option. Starting at USD$100, the software allows you to connect to an unlimited number of devices, but is limited by an “address book” which is tied to your license.

Costing is at the following USD amounts – $99/$249/$499. Each has an address book limitation of 20/50/unlimited. This means that you can have a maximum of 20/50 items saved in your address book with the first two licenses.

It doesn’t have a “direct connect” feature where you can insert the ID/password of a client and connect – instead, each client must be added to your address book. If you’re supporting someone for a one-off situation, simply add them then delete. Keep the ones that you need to support more often in the address book.

For a technician starting out – USD$99 isn’t a horrible price for software that gives very good connectivity with most of the features you’d want from other popular software. Development progresses slowly, but support is very responsive. The upgrade path is easy and – best of all – there is a FREE licensing option available which gives you an address book with 10 entries.

I would recommend RU over everything – the ONLY issues would be that it’s not as fast as the others with remote viewing and the mobile app needs some work. The address book is also localized – so there is no synchronizing with cloud services available. If this was supported then even with the speed issues, I’d firmly place RU at the #3 spot.

SUMMARY

While you may rate the software based on your own experiences, the features will place the items in different orders. If you’re looking for speed – AnyDesk may be #1. If you’re looking at features then ScreenConnect may be #1. If you’re looking at a combination of features and popularity, then TeamViewer may be #1. It depends on what you’re looking for. Test and see what you like. If you’re starting out – use RemoteUtilities. If you want other features – check with each vendor before purchasing/subscribing.

Well. We made it to 2021 and tech is still advancing. And I’m still not updating this as much as I should. Apologies. This will be short because I INTEND to do a bit better. We’ll see if it actually happens. And condolences to those who have lost loved ones in the past year. Keep safe everyone – especially during the COVID stuff going on.

So. Yes. 2020. It’s been a while (again). I don’t have much to update really – was in hospital – was out of hospital. That’s a story for another time.

With all of the online threats available, I’ve done some digging into online storage and things that can be done to mitigate virus/malware/ransomware issues. There are lots of great contenders, but I will update once I’ve done some more research and digging into it.

For the more technical persons, I’ve found some OwnCloud/NextCloud items and others which support WebDAV, but I’m having a horrible time with the transfer rate after mapping a drive in Windows. But – we’ll see how it all works out in the end.

Have a great 2020 all!

Something that I’d like to address – the content updating. While other companies, individuals and websites will push daily content it’s not something I’m keen on. Why? There are hundreds – thousands – millions of resources available online. Many times you’d go to sites like “HowToGeek” or “LifeHacker” and find similar articles – either with the exact same method or different methods to accomplish the same task. I’m just one guy and at times I will find information that is either not available anywhere else online, or very hard to find. This is the information that I push – quality over quantity. When things change then I may get into the race of trying to push content before other sites do, but for the time being the focus is getting information out there that will be helpful to all persons that visit my site. That’s all for now – see you in the next update! And hopefully it won’t take over a year……

Introduction

This document is created to help persons setting up InvoiceNinja on HostGator Shared Hosting accounts. While the instructions may be specific to HostGator the principles may apply to other hosts.

Requirements

• HostGator account or other hosting account / website.
• FTP access to site.
• SQL database and user creation.
• PHP 7.0 or higher.
• InvoiceNinja 4.5.5 (as of this writing) – extracted ZIP.
• FTP client.

Disclaimer

I’m doing this entirely voluntarily. If you mess something up I will not be held responsible. This is to help persons with HostGator Shared Hosting accounts – if you’re hosted elsewhere then the principles may apply but the steps may be different.

Please be aware that during tests it was found that uploading and extracting the ZIP from the host file manager failed. There seems to be a permissions issue which is why the longer route of uploading the extracted files was taken.

Thanks

All thanks go out to the following users:

https://www.invoiceninja.com/forums
@billyggla
@Hillel Coren

http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/
@p1xl
@khat17

I had lots of trouble during the initial testing and setting up. These users provided suggestions and assistance through the entire process to get things going.

Setting Up

If you’re familiar with setting up some of these things you may perform the steps in any order. I will be going through in exactly the same way that I managed to get things working. You may follow if you like or read first then pick your order.

First – get to your cPanel for HostGator and log in. We want to create an SQL database and user using the wizard. Once you’ve logged in locate the wizard from the available options.

Once you’ve located the wizard setup the database with whatever name and password you like. You may use the password generator available when you get to that step, but ensure that you save the information in a safe place.

Once you’ve created the database and user you will next need to add the user to the database. This is all done automatically through the wizard – you want to ensure that the newly created user has all privileges.

Once this is done you want to connect to your FTP for the website and create the folder you’d like to use. This means if you want to use www.mysite.com/invoice then you’ll log on with the FTP client and create a folder in /public_html/ called invoice. If you’re going to use a sub-domain then you will need to remember this path as well. For this I called mine ninjatest and all screenshots will reflect that. Change it to whatever you’d like yours to be. So my path is /public_html/ninjatest just to be clear.

Next you want to copy (drag and drop) all the extracted files to the FTP. Please note that this will take an extended time. Initially I tried to upload the ZIP (took about 2-3 minutes) and then use the HostGator file manager to extract and manage the files. Each time I did this it didn’t work. Suggestions from the persons that provided help said there were file permission errors which were happening as a result of using the HostGator file manager to do the extraction. While transfer via FTP took far longer (3-4 hours) it is the more reliable option. If you opt to use the HostGator file manager – or if you have another host and want to try that – you may go right ahead. It may work, it may not. If you have any errors then use the longer FTP transfer route. Once completed you want to setup a subdomain if you’re taking that route.

Ensure that your subdomain points to the /public folder within the path that you had uploaded InvoiceNinja to. Once completed you should see a confirmation.

You should also see this subdomain populated in a list thereafter if you check.

The next step is to ensure that PHP7 (or higher) is used in the /public folder for InvoiceNinja. To do this, go back to the main cPanel and locate the PHP SELECTOR.

Once it’s up, navigate to the /public_html/ninja/public path or wherever you had it saved.

Once you’re there, change the PHP version using the drop-down list to 7.0 or higher. For this I chose PHP EDGE (7.1) and then clicked UPDATE.

Once it’s completed you’ll get a confirmation.

At this point you should be able to access InvoiceNinja from one of two URLs:

1. yoursite.com/ninja/public
2. yoursite.com

Once it loads you can then complete the setup by filling in the fields. Please note that you may need to setup an email account for the invoice system.

And that’s it – you’re done! Have fun using InvoiceNinja!

A Few Notes

Cron Jobs

The system does allow you to setup cron jobs to automate sending out billing reminders and such. HostGator has options for EasyApache versions 3 and 4. If you find that running a cron fails, try the command for the other version of EasyApache.

EA4: /opt/cpanel/ea-php70/root/usr/bin/php /home/username/public_html/cron.php

EA3: /opt/php70/bin/php /home/username/public_html/cron.php

Once you’ve gotten that sorted, the instructions from Invoice Ninja state that you should use 8AM as the time. I personally changed mine to 9AM.

0 8 * * * /usr/local/bin/php /path/to/ninja/artisan ninja:send-invoices
0 8 * * * /usr/local/bin/php /path/to/ninja/artisan ninja:send-reminders

You’re going to change /usr/local/bin/php to the relevant path for EA3 or EA4 as mentioned above.

Client Access

If you don’t password protect the client portal based on the invoice links sent, ensure that you give a disclaimer to the clients. The portal is very powerful and has a dashboard with links to client historical data. This means that forwarding the email to other persons will potentially allow them to see all payments made. The recommendation is to have each client setup their password to access the portal.

Conclusion

So far everything is working. I’m still getting accustomed to it and the automation duplicates at times when I manually send things – but that’s not so bad. Once everything is streamlined it should work perfectly.

Introduction / Explanation

At times you may be asked to install an older version of TeamViewer than what’s currently available. At the time of this writing TeamViewer 13 is the current version. The reason for this is persons may have licenses for older versions and don’t want to upgrade due to the new licensing options. Other reasons may include the ability to use older versions with less “nag screens” (like version 5). This document will go into how to install TeamViewer 11 from the official website as well as from my own website. The principles will also apply to older versions.

Installing Older TeamViewer

The link available as of this writing may change, as TeamViewer has changed the link to their older versions before. I will cover 3 different ways to get the older version – I was going to do a fourth with going directly to their main site, but it’s extremely difficult to navigate to the older versions. Actually, with the new site layout I was unable to find my way without using a Google search.

Direct Link to Official Site

First go to the link: https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/previous-versions/ – once there you can scroll down and optionally click the agreement to accept cookies for the site.

Please bear in mind that your screen resolution may show more details than the one in the screenshot.

Once you scroll down you will see options on the right. Select the version required and then the appropriate module. Most likely you will be asked to either install the full application (option 1) or use the quick support tool (option 2). If your tech asks you to install a version not listed, click on “Need An Earlier Version?” from the options on the right.

Google Search

The next option would be to use a Google search. Simply type in “teamviewer 11” and your first link should show the page given in our first set of instructions.

From there simply follow the instructions as given in the first set (scroll up to previous instruction set).

From My Site

You can get directly to TeamViewer 11 from my site using this link: https://carlosthomas.net/Remote-Assistance/ – then download/install/run on the version I’ve asked you to download, or you can go to https://carlosthomas.net

Load main site. Go to REMOTE ASSISTANCE.

Once the page loads, scroll down (if needed).

Click on the button for the version required and once completed either install or run the version based on instructions given.