Impero Remote Manager, from the education management software company Impero Software in the UK, is a remote access and administration tool for troubleshooting and assistance. Impero services primarily the education sector. It is no longer available.
N/A
Remote Desktop Services
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Remote Desktop Services from Microsoft is virtual desktop and remote user session technology.
Where we use the Impero Remote Manager is in a school setting and it works really well for us. We have our teachers use it every day to make sure their students are always on track. It works really well for students that we know are likely to get off track. We can see their screen and know exactly when they get off track and can get them back on track quickly.
Remote Desktop services are well suited for people looking to connect to Local computers/Servers after connecting to VPN or Local Area Network. It is easy to use and performs superbly without any issues. However, it does not have support for connecting to Non-Windows-based Devices and Applications like Teamviewer beat RDP when it comes to connecting to machines outside one's network.
When you connect with RDS, everything looks and feels (and is) exactly like you're sitting at that desktop. This is great for us and for users.
You can sign in with RDS and the desktop will be the same as when you left it (if you choose to set it up that way).
Although they take some setup, RemoteApps are a very handy way to let users access a program without requiring them to actually connect to a remote desktop on the server.
Remote Desktop Services currently does not support multiple monitors on the terminal server. Unlike other applications such as Teamviewer, there's no feature to toggle between multiple screens even if they were connected to the terminal server.
Remote Desktop Services should provide an option to scale up or down the screen size after a connection is established. Currently you can only adjust the screen size prior to a connection is established. So you'll have to take a best guess at what display screen resolution will fit best on your screen.
Remote Desktop Services should offer some kind of menu to send special key strokes like Ctrl+Alt+Del to the terminal server. Currently the substitute for that particular combination is Ctrl+Alt+End. But I have yet to discover a replacement for other combination keystrokes such as Alt+PrintScrn.
The initial setup for Remote Desktop Services is complex, and licensing is costly. Each user connects to their virtual desktop hosted by a single server or group of servers, so a change or issue with servers quickly impacts every single user at the same time. Aside from that, users appreciate seeing their same personal desktop from any device or geographical location.
The support for Impero Remote Manager is actually really good and I have been pleased every time I have had to work with them. Any time I've had an issue with the software, I've been able to call support and have the issue resolved very quickly and things start working again.
As with any Microsoft Server product, support for Remote Desktop Services requires a paid support package. These are license-based and very costly, on top of the already costly product licensing. Microsoft's licensing is complicated to begin with, so setting up licensing alone essentially requires a licensing expert's counsel. There is community documentation and support available on Microsoft websites, as well as community websites.
In overall features and what LanSchool can do, we actually like that product better than Impero. The reason why we went with Impero was because of the price. It has similar features but ultimately was a lot cheaper, so we chose Impero. We are a small charter school, so our budget is a lot smaller than in other school districts.
We selected Remote Desktop Services based upon price alone. Other solutions on the market are significantly more expensive, but if your company can foot the bill you should seriously consider products that have been on the market for longer. The lack of an ability to easily upgrade farm servers has been a challenge for us - although it is still faster than updating an application on 2000+ machines. The lack of a centralized management console in 2008 R2 is also challenging, but you get by with the tools available to you. If you don't have the money to spend on Citrix or VMWare Horizon, Remote Desktop Services is a decent replacement.
