Short Notice: LogMeIn To Discontinue Free Access 408
An anonymous reader writes "The remote desktop service LogMeIn sent an email to its users today notifying them that 'LogMeIn Free' will be discontinued — as of today. This is a major shock with minimal warning to the millions of users who have come to rely on their service, made all the more surprising by the fact that 'consensus revenue estimates for LogMeIn in 2014 are $190.3 million,' suggesting that their system of providing both free and paid accounts for what is ultimately a straightforward service that could be duplicated for well under $1 million was already doing quite well." Asks reader k280: "What alternative tools are available for free, and how do they compare to LogMeIn?"
Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I just set up two DNS servers, and my own dyndns service (inspired on freedns.afraid.org) and I make sure the people I support have the necessary port forwards for ssh using keys. From there on, it's just an ssh tunnel away for RDP or VNC.
Now, for a nice all-in-one-package, where you don't need to do anything yourself and don't need to prepare the target PC's, I'd say TeamViewer works perfectly fine.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
and I make sure the people I support have the necessary port forwards for ssh using keys.
Yea that compares to Logmein. Did you tip your fedora while you wrote that spew?
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
Personally I just cross the streams, align my Heisenberg compensators, and make sure my flux capacitor is online and I can tunnel into any machine using a combination of TTFN, IDK, LOL, and h(u)sh. Pretty simple.
But, y'know, if you want to be all lazy and shit you can just use Gbridge.
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Seriously though, TeamViewer is fine. The point of LogMeIn was that, if you needed remote access to another user's PC but they weren't technically savvy, you could walk them through it without too much trouble. SS
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Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, because I'm certainly going to set up port forwarding on my grandmother's machine, and my multiple non-server machines in my own home...
Now, let's see... 3390 was the bedroom machine, right? or was that the kid's room?
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ssh -L 3389:wifes-computer:3389 myserver.no-ip.com
Now you have a tunnel going from localhost:3389 to the wifes-computer, going over myserver.no-ip.com. This means you point your RDP client to localhost and you magically connect.
Clients like Reminna can do this all from the interface.
Nothing is exposed, except for the server and only the ssh daemon. Everything is nicely encrypted. My example was for RDP, but you can do VNC too by using
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're the one missing the reading comprehension.
I've been an IT admin for a decade, and a software engineer for about a decade before that. I can build tunnels in my sleep. I learn a new programming language every year or so. I'm not making myself unable to do this.
Sure, I can set up a tunnel by hand, but that's inconvenient at best. One of the benefits of LogMeIn was that it handled all of the routing for me, regardless of skill level. I don't need to have an SSH server on-site, or deal with port forwarding across disparate NAT devices, or figure out how to punch holes in a firewall that I haven't worked on in a year. I don't choose to spend my time that way.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing is, as an admin, I've steered a few clients toward paid subscriptions to LogMeIn, specifically because their free service was so good. By using it personally, I was aware of their features and updates, without needing to spend even more time researching. That's not going to happen any more. Now when I need a remote-control system for Windows beyond basic RDP, they'll get the same examination as their competitors. By getting rid of the "leeches", they also lost a competitive advantage.
actually learn how to do for yourself
I've already learned how to shovel my driveway, but I still chose to buy a snowblower.
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That's the problem with depending on a "free" service.
Isn't that the most important lesson from all of this? Google cancels stuff willy-nilly (admittedly with decent notice). Other stuff disappears completely. Even paid services get acquired, merged, destroyed.
If you rely on a free web service for personal use, you could be in for a shock. If you rely on a free web service to run a business .... I don't want to buy shares of your company.
That said, I use gmail and Google calendar. I should know better....
What's the answer? I suppose I should say, "do it all yourself" but that can be a tall order, especially if you need to sync mobile devices or multiple operating systems. The truth is, I don't know of an easy answer.
I'd say "if you rely on a third-party web service with no alternatives or exit plans, then you're screwed whether you pay for it or not." Relying on a third-party email provider is pretty easy, just point your MX record at the new server, bam, you're migrated. Ok, so there's replication and actual migration, but the point is email is standard and you can pick and choose at will if one service goes away. You were making backups right? When LogMeIn, Google whatever, Facebook, etc, go belly up, get bought out,
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I've been an IT admin for a decade, blah blah blah, and I agree.
I don't think there is an easy answer, either. Each decision of what to use should have a cost/benefit analysis, which includes the risk of service loss or interruption. You can avoid vulnerability by adding effort, or lower costs by taking on risk. Even for a business, some risk is fine. The cost of a service loss, amortized over the lifetime of the service, may still come out lower than the cost of using a more reliable service*.
In your case
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I just switched to TeamViewer, thankfully they too have an IOS application and are almost as easy to use as LogMeIn was - time will tell just how well it works when I'm on travel and want to access my home machines. I have in the past turned MANY people on to LogMeIn so that they may help out family members who's computers need occasional maintenance and who aren't local, at least one or two of them recommended the product to their companies for remote access on a paying basis. That will obviously no longer
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Really. Geek Card revoked.
I set up a group of rules like 15110, 15111, 15112, 15113 then on my laptop I use a ~/.ssh/config file with entires like
Host HomeWife
Hostname myhomeip.net
Port 15111
User honey
Compression yes
Then I don't have to remember. BTW I know the external IPs, internal IPs, firewall rules, etc for all my work systems at multiple locations as well as my home systems.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd mod you up as well if I had points today. Sadly, the days when this was a site full of resourceful DIY geeks are long gone. It's not quite as bad as reddit yet but it's getting there.
I know a lot of people who do similar home-brew solutions. You shouldn't be getting any heat for your suggestions, especially since you even offered a suggestion that was NOT a DIY.
Re:Uh? (Score:4)
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xkcd did it (Score:5, Funny)
well. i know i should not. but it just seems to repeat again and again, and this seems so relevant...
http://xkcd.com/1150/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah I dunno man, I have pretty much switched to reddit. Their comment sorting makes most of the losers disappear, or something. /. used to cater to people like you, who make excellent posts. Now you are yelled at by trolls. I don't understand it. You even posted the command for fscks sake!
Don't go too far, some of us still appreciate informed posts.
andy
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I have team viewer install on a few client computers. It works great for tech support. So far everything I did with Logmein I could do with TeamViewer. If Logmein has something TeamVierwer don't it was stuff I never used.
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Umm... How about because I have a younger son who lives full time with his other parent. 850 miles away from me. And I need to be able to help him out because his other parent is not tech savvy.
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Go back to reddit
Re:Back to my mac? (Score:4, Insightful)
Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Chrome Remote Desktop doesn't have all the bells and whistles that LogMeIn has, but it's simple and works well.
Re:Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I use logmein for the same purpose, and I must say I might have considered signing up for pro, but the zero-notice cancellation of the free account has left a major bad taste in my mouth. It's a pretty blatant attempt to rush people into signing up for the paid program, because hey, give people a month's notice to evaluate alternatives and the might find something else they like. For that reason, there is zero chance I'll sign up for logmein pro.
Re:Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
That they would make a major change like that which invalidates a previously purchased product, in my case an excellent $130 program called Ignition, with no recourse to continue other than paying them more money, tells me all I need to know about how LMI views their subscribers.
Baaaa!
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Seconded.
Since I am considered to be a go-to IT guy for my friends and family and about 90% of them are using Chrome anyway, the transition from LogMeIn (and VNC for couple of them) was easy.
On their side it was just one plugin to install, per-session passwords (PINs) are nice (nothing to write down and/or remember (forget)), great performance regardless of platform.
Re:Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Important note - Chrome Remote Desktop works by default as a screen scraper, so that anyone physically near the computer you've remotely logged in to can see what you're doing on the monitor. However, there's a simple registry key that you can add to enable "curtain" mode, which spins up an instance of Remote Desktop and connects to that, instead.
More information here [google.com].
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I will be sure to tell the auditors that when they ask how the cleaning staff found out the contents of our quarterly report a week before it was released.
"But I turned off the monitor before I left the buliding! And sprinkled lemon juice on my keyboard! There is NO WAY that anybody could have intercepted that information."
If you can afford a cleaning staff you can afford to pay for VPN. I was thinking of the home or home office.
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Unfortunately, it looks like [google.com] they have no plans [google.com] (see "known issues") to allow you to remote into Linux desktops. So this lets you go from Linux -> Windows, but not Anything -> Linux.
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Why do you need a remote management tool for Linux? There's SSH fer cryin' out loud and if you really need desktop access, use VNC.
This sucks (Score:2)
I used to use LogMeIn Free a lot in my last job for remote desktopping to my work machine, and it worked well. Luckily I no longer currently have that need, but I may do again in future. Trying to ge through a NAT setup to VPN into a box is an utter nightmare, if not downright impossible without admin access to and a full understanding of the company's firewall/NAT setup. What we really need of course is widespread IPv6 (I'm in the UK and IPv6 availability is still fucking abysmal) so we can just directl
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Re:This sucks (Score:4, Informative)
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Much easier to go to your IT dept. and say "please allow access for IP address X to IP address Y on port Z" than "please do that, and allow a hole to be poked in the NAT setup through port ABC".
alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
Although join.me is by logmein this one seems to be free so try to use join.me instead of a connection pc 2 pc is what your looking for. works great for troubleshooting a complete noob that messed is pc up and calls you at midnight to fix his pc.
Theres also teamviewer that works in a similar way like join.me and logmein. You can remotely log in a pc and work on it. Skype also has a share screen function so you might look at that as well
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Re:alternatives (Score:4, Informative)
You're describing UltraVNC Single Click: http://www.uvnc.com/products/u... [uvnc.com]
Chrome Remote Desktop (Score:2)
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Logmein loses 99% of their user base. :)
Re:Translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They sure won't be upgrading to paid customers now, though. Not after being cut off within a day.
Re:Translation... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Huh, TFS conveniently left that out. In that case, I can't really understand a reaction more extreme than "D'oh!", since it gives people more than enough time to plan ahead.
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They sure won't be upgrading to paid customers now, though. Not after being cut off within a day.
They sure didn't upgrade to paid accounts in the past, though. Not after using those services for years.
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Re:Translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it so surprising? Also, $1 million? (Score:5, Insightful)
made all the more surprising by the fact that 'consensus revenue estimates for LogMeIn in 2014 are $190.3 million,' suggesting that their system of providing both free and paid accounts for what is ultimately a straightforward service that could be duplicated for well under $1 million was already doing quite well.
Why is it surprising that a company might want to do better than "quite well" when it sees the opportunity?
Also:
what is ultimately a straightforward service that could be duplicated for well under $1 million
Go on then. Or was that number just pulled out of someone's behind?
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Go on then. Or was that number just pulled out of someone's behind
Most deinitely, pulled. Also, the guy who wrote that is confused about revenue vs. profit. If logmein was sucha profitable organisation and it was so easy for someone else to offer an alternative service, there would be dozens of them - everywhere. And logmein's founder would have sold out to Google / Farcebook / Oracle / whoever, years ago.
Pity, was useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Used it to control my HTPC from my iPad. I think their pricing is just a wee bit too high, though. If it were, say, $25 a year (rather than $50), I'd probably say that it was worth it to avoid having to find an alternative. As it is, I'll find something else.
I ditched LogMeIn a couple of years ago (Score:5, Informative)
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A "networking VPN"? As opposed to some other VPN that has nothing to do with networks? ;)
Anyway, VPN is overkill if all you need is remote control, sure.
But if you do have a VPN running (whether for other uses, or because there's no kill like overkill) you no longer need any special remote control solution -- standard rdp or vnc clients work from there.
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A "networking VPN"? As opposed to some other VPN
Sure beats a notworking VPN!
Similar functionality to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps this is just reinforcing my "you're an IT dinosaur, old man!" but for the benefit of us ignoramuses, might it be possible for the submitter or, god forbid, the editors to say what "log me in" actually does?
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Re:Similar functionality to what? (Score:5, Informative)
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No pissing around with NAT and firewalls, for a start.
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Thanks AC - from your post it sounds like it's a user-friendly RDP/VNC-alike-over-HTTP(S) VPN, something that I don't think would have been too hard to fit in the summary. I'm guessing from your post you've got some experience with it and indeed it sounds like it would have been useful for non-technical home users and small businesses.
Logmein is a security threat in many hands (Score:3)
I suspect many of the people who were using it for free before won't be interested in paying for it, so having the free access go away immediately could be a very, very, good thing.
The NSA are gonna be pissed... (Score:2)
That's a lot of backdoors being uninstalled!
TeamViewer or AMMYY (Score:3)
Teamviewer works fairly well. But it's pricing structure is just crazy.
There's also AMMYY Admin [ammyy.com]. It's a similar product and, if you wish to pay for it, has a more reasonable pricing structure.
Timbuktu (Score:3)
free alternative showmypc (Score:2)
If I need to do some remote tech support, I'll have the person download showmypc [showmypc.com]. It's not as robust as logmein, but easy for a person to install.
Entitlement (Score:3, Insightful)
It's so typical. Someone offers a service/product for free. People use it and like it. They keep using it. Then the service/product gets changed/removed/etc and everyone yells at the owner about how they feel shafted instead of *thanking* the owner for providing such a useful service for free for so long.
Everyone feels entitled to get whatever they want for free.
Re:Entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so typical. Someone offers a service/product for free. People use it and like it. They keep using it. Then the service/product gets changed/removed/etc and everyone yells at the owner about how they feel shafted instead of *thanking* the owner for providing such a useful service for free for so long.
Everyone feels entitled to get whatever they want for free.
No one is entitled to anything above and beyond what the contract says - no contract, no entitlement.
*However*, in just the same way as a customer might be peeved when a supplier sticks rigidly to the contract terms instead of offering some good-will flexibility, a customer of a free service is going to be a bit peeved by this kind of no-notice change to the service... And peeved customers aren't the kind of people to continue to be customers, which is important where you're withdrawing the free service in the hope that many of your "free" customers will move to the paid service - if you pissed them off then they probably won't.
I'll give you a real world example: I have a bunch of servers in datacentres run by Host-It [host-it.co.uk]. They are over-priced, but we've been happy with their customer service so haven't switched to a cheaper datacentre. We pay for 12 months of hosting up-front, and about a month after we paid for one of our servers, the server failed and we decided to retire it. Coincidentally, the contract was up for renewal for another of our servers at the same time, so we asked them to transfer the remaining 11 months on the contract for the failed server over to that server. Seemed pretty fair enough to us. They flatly refused - sure, the contract doesn't say they have to do that, but it would seem to be a reasonable thing to do from a good-will perspective. So we had to pay for 11 months of hosting for a server that died (so they haven't actually been hosting it) because they refused to be reasonable and instead stuck rigidly to the contract terms. Now I'm not saying they were in the wrong - far from it, legally speaking they were dead in the right, but their lack of good will has ensured all future servers we commission will be hosted elsewhere.
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Expectations, not entitlement.
If you provide a service and lead people to believe they'll be able to use it, then yes, they'll be upset if you pull it out from under them (free or not, the free is irrelevant). That's not entitlement, that's having been deceived.
If you provide a service and indicate at some point of time it'll be discontinued/rates raised, informed folks will expect it and be fine. Ignorant folks will be upset initially.
If I'm a paying customer, who is aware you have treated users of your
Roll your own (Score:2)
Want to send a message? Cancel your account. (Score:5, Insightful)
Logmein is the successor of PC Anywhere (Score:2)
Re:Logmein is the successor of PC Anywhere (Score:4, Insightful)
VNC has been around for quite a while I remember using the AT&T Labs version back in 1999.
Log Me in was simply a repackaged VNC with aded wrapper software and service.
noVNC (Score:2)
Classicly I have used SSH to tunnel both RDP and VNC though it can be cumbersome on the client side as you need a VNC viewer and SSH software. Not a big deal if its your personal tablet or laptop as you can easily run ConnectBot on Android or similar on iOS and then use a VNC client. On a laptop use Putty on windows or on OSX, ssh is included by default. But if its a PC out of your control so to speak your options are limited. There is a java applet version of tightvnc which runs inside a browser, though ja
Two more: Crossloop and Fog Creek's Copilot (Score:2)
Copilot is free to use on weekends (their "day pass" pricing is $5 on weekdays and free on weekends).
Competitive Pressure (Score:2)
This behaviour by LogMeIn makes me suspect that they have got wind of a serious competitor for their service. If so, they will want to get subscriptions off as many potential customers as possible without giving them time to search for alternatives.
The other possibility is that LogMeIn have a cash flow issue and need a some more money to stay in business.
Either way, I'm out.
Good (Score:3)
Too many use these systems and getting kicked out into the cold should remind the community that we can and should develop our own VPN solutions free of corporate constraints.
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We could do that as well.
Its really not that complicated.
Mostly what Logmein does is provide instant DDNS services.
All you have to do is build DDNS into your VNC server and you have the same thing. It is not complicated and it would be just about as simple as Logmein, for free, and beyond the control of rapacious companies trying to milk small time users of unreasonable fees.
Use opens source (Score:3)
Re:Teamviewer (Score:5, Informative)
TeamViewer recently pushed an "update" that imposes a fairly short time limit on the free connections. This was not mentioned to the users prior to running the update. It also "upgraded your account" online so you can no longer run the older unlimited version of teamviewer.
That, combined with the obsession about not wanting you to install your licensed copy on more than one support computer (despite being totally online and trivially blocked from simultaneous instances) lead me to drop my support for them as well. We even bought a license, but having to bump someone from the machine it's registered on just to remote into someone else here is a hassle. Just another example of making users "regret upgrading". That's a horrible business model.
There really isn't any good free 3rd party alternative out there that I've seen. I can map ports and even have set up remote check-ins to manage changing IP addresses, but being able to automatically traverse routers (uPNP) I haven't managed to replicate yet. The easiest thing for me at this point, since I run mac, is to simply use FaceTime's screen sharing, which provides the auto check-in for dynamic IPs and also does a good job of getting in through routers. The last os upgrade was free even, which makes it a bit cheaper than LogMeIn or TeamViewer ;)
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Thanks for the tip! Download version 8 and keep those install files backed up for Windows, OSX and Linux. If they disable the servers for these versions, well we'll see what to do then. OpenSSH and port forwarding, plus manuals with good screenshots how to set this up is a good start.
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that DOES NOT WORK. After you launch the latest version, it connects online and "upgrades" your account. Once upgraded, if you try to launch an older version of teamviewer and sign in with your account, "you can no longer use this version of teamviewer, please install the latest update".
BS like that, that's why I left. "OK then, so if you're so into using forced online verification, why can't you let me install it on all the machines here so long as I'm only USING it on one at a time?" They refused to
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Or, you could actually pay for the product you use. Just sayin.
Re:Farewell logmein (Score:5, Interesting)
And I'm sure that Logmein will be crying that you left.
I use several free services and never pay for them. However, I also recommend them to clients, and often they do pay for them. I am responsible for quite a few paid no-ip subscriptions, and I personally never pay. I was responsible for a few paid dyn dns subscriptions back in the day when they were free. Now I use and recommend no-ip. See how that works?
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All of these type services should do this, it's one way scammers get access to clueless user's computers.
"This is Microsoft Support. Your computer has virus, and we need to access it. Please log into this site with this ID."
Total BS.
Scammers use the Internet too! Ban it! Please...
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Not really upset about monetizing their product, but ONE DAY'S NOTICE?! Whomever made that decision had better start updating the `ol resume.
Eh, I'm not sure about that. I suspect the concept here is that by minimizing the notice, users have less time to shop for options, and are thus more likely to convert to the paid product. The flip side is that some (like you) will get mad about the blatantly unreasonable notice and refuse to have further dealings with them no matter how bad the competing options are, but it's not at all obvious that this isn't a net win for them, compared to a more reasonable notice.
The 7 day trial is particularly clever
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Don't forget the (accurate) presumption that securing one device well (the nat device) is a lot easier than securing all the internal devices equally well.
Your post was right, except for the word 'accurate'. Perimeter defences on networks really don't work, especially when you have things like Cisco phones, HP printers, and Dell management interfaces, with known and unpatched security vulnerabilities all connected to the network. It just needs one person to bring a compromised machine inside the perimeter and an attacker has full control (and good luck getting rid of them once they've got their botnet control software running on your printer). With a lot o
Re:Well ... (Score:4, Informative)
Join.me is made by the same folks... (Score:3)
...and will likely suffer the same fate.