Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Basic network administration for unclassified systems is appropriate. I would never use it in a secure/classified environment based on its company ownership. We do not use the current version 3, so any improvements made may not be addressed in this review.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Easy list of clients Easy to use for end users No external VPN connection required Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Slow or intermittent connectivity if there is no good communication link between connected equipment They could add functionality so that the user of the tool can take full control of the equipment when changing users Provide more detailed information about the user that makes the remote connection to the computer Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Performance There are some third party tools available that allow you to manage multiple connections.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review We actually use both products, but our primary tool for corporate user access by our IT staff is Radmin. We use Microsoft RDP for access to our network servers since we can better secure our server access with Microsoft's product.
Read full review Return on Investment Allowed remote users access from home Shared file access for multipolar users from a centralized location Cost to add additional users when maxed out Purchase multiple licenses for programs to run in virtual machines. Or unable to run on a virtual machine Read full review Easy remote work troubleshooting Easy staff training it is not possible to connect to Radmin with smartphone apps Read full review ScreenShots