RDM+ by SHAPE Services
SHAPE Services S60 3rd Applications, part 3 - RDM+
About a month ago I was on a short holiday without my laptop and one of my colleagues called to ask me a question. Unfortunately, I needed access to a file on my laptop to provide him with an answer so we had to wait until the following Monday to resolve the issue. I realized then that it was time for me to start looking into a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) solution. If you are unfamiliar with VNC, it’s essentially a technology that allows you to remotely access and interact with a computer. That’s right, control your PC from your S60 3rd device!
I went through several different apps on my way to finding my favorite, and I landed on RDM+. This my friends, is an excellent app. RDM+ has tons of functions and it’s extremely easy to set up. Typically when I review an app I try to walk through the setup - at least to an extent - but there are just too many capabilities in RDM+ to cover everything. When I was done walking through the app and taking screenshots for this review, I had about 60 images! Cutting through them was tough as RDM+ has so many useful functions, but I decided to stick to a few basics for the purposes of this review - and I still have 24 screenshots to post!
To start things off, there are two components of RDM+ of course. The first is a server app that gets installed on your PC and the second is a java app that installs on your device. Installation and set up is quite straight forward for both components and there is a good user manual and a getting started guide to help you through any problems. Once you’re through the setup, getting connected is as simple as selecting your PC from your address book (address book = list of available PCs to connect to) and selecting Connect from the options menu.
RDM+ connects very quickly and can utilize GPRS, EDGE, 3G, or WLAN. Now we’re ready to get down to business…
The first function I’ll discuss is the Desktop viewer - which isn’t restricted to just your desktop of course. This basically gives you a visual portal into your PC, complete with a mouse that you can control with your directional pad and even click. Below you can see that when I first log on to my PC it is locked. In order to unlock it, I must send a Ctrl+Alt+Del command which is very simple with RDM+.
Now I can move the mouse and click on the password field in order to enter my password. There is a keyboard function within RDM+ that utilizes the standard S60 3rd text-entry view to input text into any field or open file on your PC.
Once I’ve entered my password (which isn’t really “password” obviously), I’m in! Now I can perform a host of functions, open and operate any app, and zoom in/out. Just as an example, below you can see me quickly open a simple command prompt window.
The other very useful function that I’ll cover in this review is the file browser. RDM+ allows you to fully access and browse the drives on your PC. From there, you can easily copy any files from your PC to any directory on your phone or memory card. Below, you can see that I’ve browsed to a folder on my PC that contains a bunch of freeware S60 3rd apps.
Now that I’ve found the app I was looking for, I can copy it to my device. I simply choose Client to switch from my PC file tree to my device file tree and then I can browse to the destination folder of my choosing.
As I mentioned before there are many, many other things you can do with RDM+. Examples are view/close/kill PC processes, send commands such as Restart/Shut Down to your PC, start/stop system processes, and even view system and hardware info. If you are in the market for a VNC solution I highly recommend that you give RDM+ a try. Of course Shape Services offers a free trial period of seven days so that you can make sure that the app is right for you. If for some reason it isn’t right for you, you make want to have a look at Shape’s two other VNC solutions for S60 3rd: VNC+ and TSMobiles. Each of their VNC solutions offer varied capabilities to suit a wide variety of needs. You can see some basic differences between the apps here.
By the way, I should mention that if you’re thinking that you may have some access problems with VNC due to network security, no worries. My office network sits behind a complex array of security measures and I have no problems whatsoever connecting. I’ll also mention that RDM+ itself is extremely secure, with three security levels and 128-bit encryption that utilizes randomly generated keys.
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