WinAdmin is the sort of app I ‘ve been wanting to find for a long time “ a real, proper Windows Terminal Services client app for the iPhone.  It ‘s been around for a while, but I ‘ve just recently got a chance to test out its latest version.

Over the last couple of years, I ‘ve tried out quite a few apps “ from both the jailbreak arena and the App Store “ that allow you to remotely access a Windows (or other) system via the iPhone.   Several of them were pretty good apps “ but none were like the standard RDP clients I ‘m used to using on a Windows or Mac PC.  WinAdmin is.

What Does It Do?

If you ‘re involved in IT / network support in an environment with Windows servers (or even workstations that need to be remotely accessed) than you ‘ve probably used Terminal Services “ and WinAdmin will look like home to you.

Here ‘s a little detail from its App Store description:

WinAdmin is a Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client for your iPhone or iPod Touch.  WinAdmin allows you to remotely access and manage Windows computers using just your finger.  WinAdmin also allows for multiple concurrent remote desktop sessions so you can quickly connect and interact with several Windows computers at once using a familiar Safari ‘page ‘ interface.

And some of its features:

• Scroll and pan across the Windows Desktop just by dragging the screen
• Zoom in and out on your Windows Desktop by using pinching and stretching gestures
• Switch between portrait and landscape views just by rotating your iPhone or iPod Touch
• Tap to single click the screen to perform a single click
• Double-tap to perform a double-click
• The ‘Favorite Servers ‘ tool allows you to save your connection settings for future use.  Just tap any of your Favorite Servers to start a remote desktop session.
• Use the standard iPhone keyboard for text entry
• Lots of connection options. WinAdmin allows you to configure and save the following settings on a per server basis: username, password, domain, number of colors, screen resolution, port number, and whether or not to connect to the console session.

There are also some requirements for using this app.  If you ‘ve used Terminal Services or you ‘re involved in IT, these will be obvious to you, but here ‘s a listing of them anyway:

• The following versions of Windows are supported: Windows 2000 Server, 2003 Server, XP Professional, Vista (Business, Enterprise & Ultimate editions), Windows Server 2008 (Terminal Services Gateway is not supported)
• XP Home users are supported but please read the FAQ on our support website before purchasing
• Your Windows computer must be reachable via the internet or your internal network by your iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Your Windows computer must be setup to allow remote desktop connections (also know as ‘Remote Desktop Sharing ‘, not to be confused with VNC)
• You must have the IP address or DNS name of your Windows computer and a valid Windows login for the computer.
• Any software or hardware firewalls need to be configured to allow remote desktop traffic from your iPhone / iPod Touch.

Again, if you ‘re involved in Windows support and you do any remote support, you know all these things and they ‘re no big deal.

**** If you haven ‘t used Terminal Services before “ READ THOSE REQUIREMENTS carefully. These are real *required* things.  This is not one of those ‘Can I do this even though my IT guys say we don ‘t allow it ‘ sort of things.  If all those aren ‘t met, this app will NOT work, just as no other Terminal Services client would not if those criteria are not met.

What Does It Do Well?

Nearly everything. Here ‘s some of the things I like best about WinAdmin:

The Favorite Servers page is a great feature “ it means you should just need to setup each server you need to access once and then have easy one tap access to it from there onwards (except when you need to change your own password or alter a screen resolution preference or similar).  The set of preferences you ‘re able to store with each favorite is not comprehensive (when compared to a desktop app), but it covers the basics and is quite useful.

The ability to run multiple sessions is very useful “ especially if you have a good number of clients and / or servers that you need to support.

The Safari-like page interface for switching between active remote sessions is great.  It ‘s comfortable because you ‘re used to it from Safari, and it works well “ it ‘s easy to just flick across and tap to select the session you want to work with.

It is fast.  Very fast.  There is very little lag or latency when doing things within remote sessions.  And it just feels absolutely like an RDP client should.  So you can easily go about your common support and admin tasks.  Like managing printers

Or users and other domain objects

Restarting or troubleshooting Services

Managing group membership:

Working with command line apps is also easy

Everything moves around quickly and smoothly with finger touches and flicks.  Just as one example, when logging in, it ‘s easy to flick the login screen up so that ‘s it ‘s positioned above where the keyboard is.

Also, nearly all the gestures feel natural and easy to use “ tap for single click, double-tap for double-click, tap and hold to bring up the right-click menu “ all work very well.

Toggling the keyboard to be visible or hidden is done with just a single tap on the ABC button for this.

In fact, none of the very few control buttons for the app get in your way at all.  They ‘re all placed in a very minimalist top bar, where they ‘re easily accessible but take up hardly any screen space. To send a CTRL-ALT-DEL to the remote machine, you just tap once on the button at the top right of the screen.

When you exit out of WinAdmin, to take a call or work with another app, or if you let the iPhone go into sleep mode, your remote session/s are disconnected, but not logged off.

What ‘s Not So Good?

As with many remote apps, even on the desktop, there are a few things that are a little fussy and fiddly with WinAdmin “ but they are fairly minor things, like:

Sometimes tapping on small objects (like the X to close an app in the top right corner of its window) can be challenging to make work “ especially at higher resolutions.  It may take a few attempts to get a response “ but always works in the end.

Scrolling within a single app is a bit awkward.  I cannot make a two finger approach work for me, so I tend to use the scroll bars within an app to get this done. (please note “ scrolling on the desktop and with multiple apps open, is quite easy).

Overall

For anyone who does any Windows support / network admin, this app is a real sight for sore eyes.  For me, it was almost ‘love at first sight ‘ when I saw its list of features “ and my affection for it has only grown with use.

As I ‘ve said above, I ‘ve tried quite a few remote access apps on the iPhone, but this one is easily the smoothest and the best I ‘ve tried.  It also has the huge added benefit that in many Windows environments, Terminal Services is already setup “ so there is no need for any additional server-side setup, or opening of additional port on firewalls etc.

If you need to access Windows boxes regularly, I highly recommend this app.

You can find WinAdmin in the App Store, priced at $7.99.

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