News :: 15MR: MultiWatch v1.50

Hello all and welcomt to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is MultiWatch version 1.50 by ValixSoft—An application to remotely monitor up to 256 computers at once.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“MultiWatch is a program intended for the supervision over computers in a local network or via the Internet. You can simultaneously observe up to 256 clients in real-time. The program is able to record screenshots into the archive for the further viewing.”

Quick Pros

• Small memory footprint
• Ability to archive screenshots if needed later
• Easy-to-use multi-view layout
• ‘Silent Mode’ to hide task tray, after reboot

Quick Cons

• Installer weak; does not pick up primary drive
• Feels like an unfinished application; Had a few random crashes
• Screenshot mode forces resolution size and in bitmap form; Huge filesize
• Screenshot viewer seems bugged
• Lacking many expected or desired features (See below for some)

Expansion

According to many research projects, the internet is the highest workplace time waster—Even higher than socializing amonst co-workers (23.7% of time wasted.) There is a need for many workplaces and schools to keep a random eye on their employees to keep them on track with their work. While privacy laws and eavedropping laws have been implemented for the common workforce, most workplaces can simply notify employees that their computer usage will be monitored. While the ethical use of an application as this one is in question, it is something that is likely to become more common than not over the next few years. This application tries to help fill the market for such a need.

While the installer is quick and easy, it’s ‘ease’ is a little too high; It defaults the files to C:\, even if your primary drive is another drive as it is with my workstation. To top it off, it installs the Start Menu icons on C:\ which doesn’t help if your Windows installation is on another drive. As for the client, it installs shortcuts as well, and also will have a task tray icon on the first launch; handy for setting passwords and such.

While the application has the ability to record the screenshots as it goes, there is no ability to choose screen size based on the resolution of the computers being monitored. The recording goes into different files, organized by IP and date. With one client for about 2 minutes however, at 1024×768, the file size was getting huge already; 26MB. If you recorded at 1024×768 (So you can read and see most of what’s going on, as opposed to only being able to barely identify what windows are open in 320×240 mode) for an 8-hour day, you’re talking into the gigabytes per day, per client. This was with the setting for compression at the highest as well. This would be unusable for anything except sudden recordings for short periods of time.

While I could record the screenshots into the file (Which seems like BMP format in one file,) I could not view them. I tried many different ways to make the Viewer work but nothing would make the application work. Drag and drop, command line launching with the file names, no open command, nothing. It seems bugged that it won’t open the files at all, even with the application closed.

The application footprint is surprisingly small, but with such a surprisingly small footprint, comes a lack of a professional feel and common features you would hope would be included. While the master application is decent with the adjustable multi-view, savable screenshots, multiple rotating groups, full-screen mode and more; The application and its client is lacking many features and abilities that would be expected. While you can perform some basic functions on each viewed computer, they are limited. Remote mouse and keyboard support would be nice to allow technicians to use this application to troubleshoot issues or an instructor to help students work though a trouble spot. There is no way to manually trigger a reconnect to a client, or see if the user shut off the client themselves either. There is also no high quality mode for connecting to a single client for more detail, nor video recording either. The application is essentially for monitoring only and very rudimentary additional features.

Final Verdict

While this application is good at monitoring, this is about it. The recording feature except short sudden records is prohibitively large as is the remote control features are weak and limited. While it is free, you may want to give it a try. While for pay, for an unfinished-feeling application I could not justify $49 for 4 clients plus master. The price jumps up fast from a 4-client license; $89 for 10-seat license, all the way to $249 for 31+ seat license. The application needs some serious polishing before I could recommend it.

An alternate for schools (and possibly even corporations) may be an application such as SynchronEyes

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, April 09, 2007