I am a big fan of Remote Desktop. That’s probably because I have three different desktop computers in different locations. If I need to switch from the downstairs office to the upstairs office, with RDP it’s no problem. I don’t need to close my documents and reopen them on the other computer. I can just make a remote desktop connection from the upstairs computer to the one downstairs and continue working on whatever’s open and running.

The other advantage of RDP is that one of my computers is much faster than the others. It would be great to have a Nehalem 64 bit system with a ton of RAM in each location, but not so financially savvy – especially since I can run everything on the fast guy and just access its desktop from whichever of my older machines I’m sitting at.

With XP, there were some serious limitations to Remote Desktop if you happened to be a fan of multiple monitors (those who have been reading my blogs and articles for any length of time know that I am). Then along came the ability to span multiple monitors by adding the /span parameter to mstsc.exe to open the RDP connection, so that the remote desktop connection wasn’t limited to just one monitor when the host computer had its apps and windows spread out over two or three. The problem was that the multiple monitors had to be the same size and running at the same resolution for this to work right.

Windows 7 adds better support for the whole multiple monitor scenario. Instead of having to deal with the command line, you can configure the Win7 RDP client to use multiple monitors by simply expanding the Options link and clicking the Display tab, then just check the box that says “Use all my monitors for the remote session” as shown below.

Now you’ll see the RDP host’s desktop across all your monitors, even if those monitors are different sizes and running at different resolutions.

What would be even better?  The ability to designate how many of your monitors to use. For instance, when connecting to my computer that has two monitors from an RDP client computer that has three monitors, I would like to be able to put the remote desktop session on two of the monitors where I’m sitting and display the local desktop on the other one. Not a big deal, but something to think about for the next incarnation.

Be sure to check out the Experience tab in the connection options. Here you can specify what type of connection you have, which will determine which elements will be allowed for best performance. You can also manually check or uncheck the visual elements that you want to use. By default, it’s set to the lowest bandwidth connection with none of the fancy visual elements enabled, so if you have a high speed broadband connection or you’re using Remote Desktop over a LAN, you can get a “prettier” experience by enabling the visual elements here.

Meanwhile, there are a number of other improvements to RDP in the Remote Desktop Connection v7 that comes with Windows 7. I’ll be writing about them all in next week’s VistaNews.

deb@shinder.net   www.debshinder.com