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It's quite interesting how "install a one-time thing, get code, get access" turns out to be such a difficult and apparently unprofitable business.

TeamViewer has always been evil, due to their persistent-install-by-default policy, not to mention them clinging to 4-digits PINs for years after that ceased to be viable, and refusing to respond to security concerns with anything approaching transparency. I used to be a paid customer for many years, but had to abandon ship due to ever-increasing costs (yeah for mandatory viewer upgrades!) related to MSP features that I never asked for and were complicating even the most basic tasks.

Then, I turned to Splashtop, which was glorious for a while. Until they decided to assign me a "customer success representative" and wanted to do the same MSP upsell, even though I explicitly and repeatedly asked them to leave me alone.

Since then, I've mostly been using Windows QuickAssist, and it's OK: you still need to be on the phone with the party you support to guide them through various permission prompts, but that's probably unavoidable.

The list of failed products in this space is impressive, by the way! Anyone remember Fog Creek Copilot? Weird, because "I'll pay you $99.95 on an annual basis to do 2-3 remote sessions every month" sounds like it should be lucrative...




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