Kerkia

Background

Desktop sharing software allows you to share your desktop to remote computer users. This typically is used in order to present software tools or even everything that’s on your screen, to multiple viewers, though can also serve the purpose of one-to-one user/customer support as well as team collaboration. Some solutions even include the possibility to give control of your computer to the remote user.

Please also consider reading our article on remote control software, given the overlap between those solutions.

Recommendations

Our best recommendation is BuddyMeeting, a completely free solution for online collaboration. Based on open-source components that are proven and well supported, it features a lot of capabilities including desktop sharing, , video chat, text and voice chats, file sharing, up to 25 attendees, a training/class module soon to come, etc. This solution requires no download, however it does require creating accounts on the web site in order to create meetings.

Maybe simplistically, we actually found that Skype’s screen sharing solution is very simple and effective. It supports partial sharing, full screen mode, and natively all other features from Skype including the main one: audio conferencing. This is hence our main recommendation and its only real drawback is that all users, presenter and viewers, obviously require a Skype account.

Mikogo is also a great solution, which works a bit differently. The presenter creates a session and receives a key that he must provide to the participants. They then go online and enter their ID in order to view the presentation; they will need to download and run an executable file though. Unlike Skype there is hence no account required. It also features tons of possibilities such as presenter switching, remote control, session scheduler and recording, whiteboard, file transfer, back monitor, etc. We are still evaluating this great product hence it is not our top recommendation so far, but this may come…

Our last recommendation is Microsoft’s SharedView, a great team collaboration tool from Microsoft that allows not only sharing your screen with up to 15 participants but also providing control of your computer to another participant.

Web links

BuddyMeeting

Web site: http://www.buddymeeting.com

Skype

Web site: http://www.skype.com

Download: http://www.skype.com/download

Mikogo

Web Site: http://www.mikogo.com/

Download: http://www.mikogo.com/download/windows-download/

SharedView

Web site: http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=94

Download: http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=94