Central is a cloud-based remote monitoring and endpoint management solution enabling IT professionals to monitor,
manage, and secure their endpoint infrastructure. Whether it is used for remote employees or endpoints scattered across the globe, the vendor promises that Central
provides IT organizations with the speed, flexibility, and insight needed to
increase productivity, reduce IT costs, and mitigate risk.
$80
per month
Parallels Desktop
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Parallels Desktop is a virtual user session solution built to run Windows on Macintosh computers without rebooting. It is designed for OS X Yosemite with one-click tuning.
LogMeIn Central by GoTo is well suited for easy, direct access to specific, perhaps mission critical, machines. Its remote control functionality and speed is very good - best in class, really. However, it simply can't replace a true and traditional RMM product in terms of robustness and overall ability (or lack thereof).
I often get asked, why not the "free" stuff (VirtualBox), and/or why not VMWare. VirtualBox, etc. are not as performant for interactive usage. I think they are fine for small applications, perhaps some enterprise app usage, but for developers, it's not good enough. VMWare has become too enterprisey and lacks some of the user-friendly stuff that Parallels focuses on. Ultimately, for developer types running OSes for deep tasks, Parallels is unrivaled.
File Transfer - You can easily transfer files between Parallels virtualized desktops and the host desktop either through Copy and Paste functionality, or Drag and Drop. You can also configure shared folders.
Switch Between Virtual and Host Desktop - You can configure swipe gestures on a MacBook Pro to be able to switch between the virtualized and host desktop. You can also launch apps from the OS X Taskbar.
Performance - Apps in Parallels run quite smoothly on my 2015 MacBook Pro, as of 2020. Considering they are running on a 5-year-old computer, I give Parallels top marks for performance.
The ability to do snapshots, backups, and other types of branching for VMs is a little confusing and takes a bit to get used to
The Parallels tools frequently pop up windows advertising functionality, while this is helpful at times it can also happen when you are doing a presentation or typing in a password.
Careful using the VMs on a shared cloud drive such as Dropbox or OneDrive, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of files which are updated when running a VM and this can clog up your Dropbox or OneDrive sync for minutes to hours even on a 2gb connection.
What I dont like is when I run out of licenses that the only way to get more is to buy large amounts. this is very frustrating and as a small business I need to watch how much i am spending. smaller license packs would be better
Users are familiar with the application which will keep us going for a little while. However since we are seeing a decline for a need for the software, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this answer changes dramatically in the near future. We would probably keep it to some extent, but we would probably reduce our licensing count.
It is wonderful after the initial setup and implementation.It's fairly intuitive and easy to use for more of our tech and users. These types of products have come a long way. I've been in tech for 20+ years, and thinking back to tools like PC anywhere things have become just so much more user friendly on both ends of the device.
It has a good integration, including the connection of peripherals. Taking files back and forth works well and I can attach my Home drive as a network drive in Windows. There is even integration with iCloud and other macOS services. There are also a few different display modes which are useful and fleixible (coherence, windowed, full-screen with multiple screens)
During our 6 years of use, we [have] never seen any downtime from their side. The application simply works. We have had incidents when we were not able to connect to remote servers by any means, but LogMeIn Central always worked. It has saved us trips to other offices. We have few users are who live in rural areas where internet speeds are not great. Supporting these users is a big challenge, but LogMeIn Central was always a lifesaver.
Every time I called in with a question or concern, your support team always provided the right information. It's great to call in to support and everyone that answers is very knowledgeable of the product.
So, this rating is a little skewed toward older behavior from Parallels, as I haven't had to contact them recently. However, in an older version of Parallels, an "update" included pop-ups urging users to upgrade to the latest version, implying that their current version wouldn't work for the latest MacOS. I found it very frustrating to be getting ads for a new version of the software in a version I had already paid for. I contacted support about this and got a generic, uncaring response. It was pretty disappointing.
LogmeIn Central is the fastest RMM in terms of remote connection. It generally performs well on networks that have low bandwidth too. In terms of features, Datto RMM does best it because it offers such a good platform for integrations and also for scripting. The community is very open with that software which really gives it a boost, and this is something LogMein Central could work on.
Main two features that made the balance decission go to the Parallels Desktop were the possibility to pause the Windows partition easily (allowing to consume less resources in Mac and save battery) and the other one is the user interface feature called "Coherence" with allows you to show the Windows application windows as if they were native to the macOS, allowing for a better user experience.
Avoid extra costs: majority of users have a Mac, so if they needed to dod something that is Windows related, it will require to users have an extra computer to do that tasks, and this have a lot of costs
Developers have more concerns how websites behaves on Windows only browsers, which increased the satisfaction of users
