Screen sharing

I installed YuuGuu, a screen sharing program, on a Mac and a Windows PC, and created a session between the two (lpress and larrypress). Here is the view of the Mac, running a chat and editing a Word document, as it appeared on the Windows PC:

Some observations:

When I typed using Word, there was a lag of perhaps one character on my screen and one word on the remote screen.

Resizing or moving the window caused longer delays – 7-10 seconds for a window that is about half the size of the monitor. If the window is very small, it only takes about 1.5 seconds.

Both machines have 1920 by 1200 resolution monitors, but the Mac screen is larger than the PC screen. Things would go faster with lower resolution monitors, but, of course, we would not be able to see as much material. You can also go into "actual size" mode in which the person with the smaller screen sees only a portion of the larger screen, but it is at the same size. Sharing a single window instead of the entire screen might be faster and more focused.

I did my tests in fast, limited-color mode. In full-color mode, the speed was incredibly slow. In fast mode, colors are rendered with a limited palette, as shown here:

When I took control of the Mac screen from the PC, things updated pretty rapidly on the Mac, but took the same long time to reflect back to my machine.

I tried playing a graphic chess game on the Mac, but the experience was lame.

I did this with two computers sitting next to each other. People working remotely would surely need a second channel for coordination – VoIP or chat.

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