There has to be a better FREE desktop sharing software than CrossLoop
Posted on March 14th, 2007 by phobulous
I am on a quest to find a good and FREE online collaboration software for 1-to-1 desktop sharing. I’ve tried CrossLoop for the past 2 weeks and found it less than desirable. Here are some issues I ran into when using CrossLoop:
- Sessions seem to kick out after 5-10 minutes
- Mouse control cannot be turned off.
- Screen resolutions do not maxmimize (I’m on 1600 x 1200)
- Rendering is very delayed (I’m on 1.5 down DSL connection)
Although the software is free, I have to believe there is better software out there for 1-to-1 conferencing (I could eat my words later). I’ll be trying Unyte shortly.
Update 3/13/2007: CrossLoop has been uninstalled 
Look for my Unyte post though because that wasn’t the winner either.
Filed under: Web Collaboration
Hi phobulous – First, thanks for trying CrossLoop and I am sorry that you didnt seem to have a good experience like our other users.
Addressing your bullets:
- Potential reasons why your sessions might have disconnected:
1) The helper, “Join” end minimizing the VNC Viewer for more than 1 minute. This is a characteristic of Tight VNC that we can’t do anything about.
2) One of the computers going into Hibernate or sleep mode after being idle for the set amount of time.
3) Some screen savers might cause a disconnect when they come on. Windows screen saver will cause a disconnect if you have it set to “Display welcome screen on resume”
4) An interruption in internet connectivity on either end of the session.
- With the product today, Yes – you cant turn off mouse or keyboard control. Stay close to our blog if that is important.
- Rendering could have been delayed because the session you had was a ‘relay’ instead of a p2p. Almost all our sessions are p2p – occasionally when that fails, we use relays as a backup.
- click on the systems menu (top left on the VNC viewer and the ‘Full Screen’). If what you are looking at is of higher resolution, you will get scroll bars – since we use tightVNC, unfortunately we can not control that right now.
Hopefully I get you to install it again
and if not and you do ever find a better 1-to-1, I want to know about it 
Please email me if you have any questions.
Thanks
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here but it could do with more detail. – A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man. – Samuel Goldwyn 1882 – 1974