Making family IT support effortless (and free)
Yesterday was one of those days where a family member had an issue with their computer. "It doesn't open when I click it" was all the information I had going into it. Debugging that through the telephone is just not happening.
I always stayed away from TeamViewer, because I was never really sure if that had a free plan, and the possibility of finding out mid-session that they don't have one was reason enough to save the hassle of yelling the installation instructions through the phone.
I remember hearing about RustDesk in a podcast a couple of years ago. The host claimed it to be a hassle-free open source replacement for TeamViewer, but by the time the next IT-support session arrived, I already forgot about it. Until yesterday!
Yesterday, I just didn't get enough information to be useful. I just needed a way to remotely access the computer, and that's then I remembered the promise of RustDesk. Going in blind, I quickly installed the client on my laptop and sent a mail with the instructions to my family member:
- Click here (a download link to the executable file)
- Press the windows key
- Type "rust" (to search for the file)
- Press enter
- Tell me the ID and the onetime password on the screen
These instructions are fool-proof! And sure enough, they worked. I logged in and debugged the issue. No paywall, no corporate bullsh**, just a simple client that just works as intended out of the box. I was delighted to see that the plan has worked out. Going forward, Rustdesk will be my primary choice for remote IT support.
If you're interested: for some reason the browser window on their screen was resized to a tiny box near the edge of the screen, so whenever they clicked a bookmarked link on their desktop, instead of "nothing happening", they just didn't see the page opening in the browser.
TL;DR
Use RustDesk instead of TeamViewer for a free and easy way to access your family's computer remotely.