PC Monitor Ongoing Review Blog
After our past review of “GFI Remote Remote/Management” software, our viewers asked us to look into PC Monitor (http://www.mobilepcmonitor.com/).
PC Monitors sales model is a bit like Team Viewer. They allow 5 computers to be monitored for non-commercial while commercial us is charged at a per computer year price.
The review of PC Monitor is five star. This simple program allows monitoring from IOS or Android with the simple installation of a program on each monitored computer. We highly recommend home users give it a try to gain familiarity with it. IT techs will quickly want to sign up for commercial monitoring as it is one of those things that once you have tried it, you can’t live without it.
We set out to test PC Monitor by setting up 7 accounts, each of which was populated by computers from our viewers. We have updated our viewers each Monday evening on TechTalk with live screen shots showing what “alerts” have come up.
The first thing we noticed was the difficulty in choosing the correct hardware parameters values to monitor. We quickly resolved this with input from our viewers and the false alarm rate was thoroughly under control by week 2. Suggested or default parameters would be very helpful.
The following represents a time line of our monitoring review each Monday during TechTalk. Note the computers with “#” to the left, mean our viewers discontinued monitoring so the results are not included in the survey. Since we agreed to do this test for a year, we will not be replacing discontinued computers at this time.
ALERT – ALERT – ALERT (15 April 2013)
We have a problem with our monitoring accounts and all testing has come to a complete halt. Richard and Scott are trying to figure out what happened.
Until further notice this blog is closed while we sort this out.
Update (16 April 2013): The problem has been resolved with PC Monitor company. Our accounts were shut down due to multiple accounts. They have been reactivated. However, the continuity of service test data is now corrupt. We would appreciate all viewers that are hosting a computer to please re-boot their computers so we can re-establish monitoring. We are going to wait until TechTalk on 22 April 2013 to decide how to move forward. The current thinking is to either abandon this review or to restart the review in August 2013. PC Monitor has performed flawlessly and the continuity of service was at 100%. Please tune in on Mondays, or check back on this site for updates on how we will proceed. I appreciate the support of all those involved in this review.
by Scott Kraft, Technology Report, TechTalk Host