Snow leopard: Remote display server?

Question

I am looking for a way to use a Mac computer with Snow Leopard from a remote machine. I know Snow Leopard has a VNC server built-in, but this has two drawbacks:

• The VNC server is attached to the physical console of the Mac, while I would prefer something like Windows Remote Desktop (i.e. you get a new session using Fast User Switching). Since OSX has Fast User Switching, I hope something similar is possible.

• The display performance of (at least the built-in) VNC server is painfully slow. It allows only full color connections. Maybe a third-party VNC server supports better compression schemes?

Answer 1

If you use Apple Remote Desktop, it's possible to decrease the color depth, thus increasing performance a little bit (still not enough for fluid everyday work, though), but you still can control only the current user.

On my to-do list is to test the terminal server and remote desktop products from AquaConnect, but I haven't had time to do that yet, but it looks promising.

Answer 2

but this has two drawbacks:

The VNC server is attached to the physical console of the Mac

Only in the default configuration - it's quite possible to host multiple independent non-shared VNC sessions on a Unix system.

The display performance of (at least the built-in) VNC server is painfully slow. It allows only full color connections.

More bits means less speed. I've not used the VNC deployed on Macs, but I've found tightVNC to be better than the Citrix / MS alternatives. OTOH, I found Nomachine NX to be better still (this is a completely different protocol). The limiting factor is always going to be the network between you and the server though.