I paid for a lifetime license, who knew that a lifetime was less than 10 years? My lifetime license was revoked and I have to buy the latest version I want to continue using. No thank you.

One thing I understood a while ago is that any service claiming a lifetime license is it's either the lifetime of the product or the company, not the customer.

I tend to avoid it unless I'm fairly certain the product / company will last for longer than it would cost me per year of a subscription (to make sure my "investment" is worth it), and that I'll use it extensively.

Nothing is truely forever, and moreso in the world of software.

I think Linus from Linus Tech Tips had the same issue. It's worth watching this on YT

This was hilarious, thank you for the tip!

Here's the ref in case anyone else wants to watch it also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRzaGUKEFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBC5BqRNkas

What's the best alternative you've found? I personally use anydesk from time to time when helping family with tech issues remotely, but I haven't looked too much at other software.

NoMachine is the closest 1:1 experience to Teamviewer I've found. It uses the same video capture method and offers a lot of the same features such as drag-and drop file copying and aspect ratio controls. The downside is the UI is very odd and difficult to maneuver, but once you get used to it, you'll ditch TeamViewer.

You will also need to connect to hosts with IPs and open your ports; it doesn't have the ability to punch through firewalls like TeamViewer can.

Hi, can you tell us what you find odd and difficult to use? Maybe we get what you mean; in the NoMachine UI there are a lot of settings you can select: the protocol, different IP addresses, encodings and so on. These are some of the advanced options that almost no users probably care about.

But the fact is that, since its inception, NoMachine was intended as an "advanced communication and remote desktop tool", more a "professional tool", not intended for the "wide public", especially because you had to "know" and be able to configure things like "an IP address", which is more in the "professional space".

To make NoMachine apt for widespread adoption, we need NoMachine Network, the infrastructure that will allow people to connect by just knowing a "machine id", the same TeamViewer does, and we are working on it. Expect this very soon.

But that said...

We would love to know form you where we can improve the NoMachine UI, to make it more usable, more friendly less "confusing" (if it is) and less intimidating. If you like, you can obviously also contact us directly. Do as you like, but we would love to hear from you.

I'll reach out to you directly, perhaps I can participate in the nomachine Network beta and provide feedback that way. Thanks for the reply!

Edit: contacted you with ticket# WU07T00092

Thanks for reaching out to us already! A beta program for Network is not currently available, but we would love to hear your feedback about your experience with our software and user interface :-) Please respond to that ticket with your comments at your earliest convenience.

I self host a relay server for rustdesk. No complaints so far. https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for, TightVNC has served all the purposes I needed for remote desktop.

Screenconnect and Splashtop come to mind. Yes - both have their flaws, but are much more palatable then TV.

Microsoft's remote desktop assistant and the VPN in my router.

Zoho Assist works pretty well. I use at work but it also has a good free tier.

I use Chrome Remote Desktop for personal use, works well enough for me.