Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Client is a free utility which allows you to connect to Windows computers running Windows from computers running Mac OS X (versions 10.4.9 or later).

For those of us who help manage Windows computers, it's a handy tool to have around, much like Screen Sharing (or Apple Remote Desktop) for connecting from one Mac to another. Fortunately I don't have to use it all that often, but last night when I tried it for the first time in a while, it crashed. I relaunched it, and it crashed again. Since I'm a slow learner, I tried it one last time. Yup, crashed a third time.

Assuming this wasn't some Halloween prank, I wondered if maybe I had an outdated version of the app, since I hadn't used it since Snow Leopard came out. I took a quick look around and found that version 2.0.1 had been released in mid-August. I downloaded the new version, ran the installer (I'm not sure why it needs an installer for what seems like a self-contained application, but it does) and the app launched as expected.

The release notes don't say much about what is new in this version, and I didn't notice any new features (other than not crashing on Snow Leopard, which is a significant plus). If you ever need to connect to computers running Windows, this 7.8MB download is a good addition to your toolbox.

Not all versions of Microsoft Windows support Remote Desktop Connections. For example, Windows XP "Professional" does, but the "Home" does not. Also, even for those versions of Windows which do support it, it is not enabled by default. If your version does not support it, you will need to find a VNC application which has a Windows 'server' and a Mac 'client'.

[If you prefer an open-source alternative to the Microsoft client, check out the versatile and free CoRD. --Ed.]

I live something of a double life. By night I am a highly influential, and very sexy, Apple blogger/pundit but by day I am a highly skilled Windows System Administrator (though I'm still very sexy). Thanks to the confluence of a nice boss and Intel Macs I am able to do all my work on a shiny new MacBook Pro. However, there is one application that I find myself using, and cursing, on a daily basis: Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is fantastic that MS makes this program available for the Mac, but it just wasn't created for someone who needs to connect to multiple Windows machines in any way. I know that the MacBU is hard at work on a Universal version of Remote Desktop Connection, so I thought I would list my major gripes with the program to help them focus on what I want (and isn't that what they truly care about?):

1. No concurrent connections: Often, I need to log into more than one Windows machine at the same time. This is very easy to do within Windows itself, thanks to the magic of MMCs (that's Microsoft Management Consoles to you), but nearly impossible using RDC on the Mac. The client only supports one connection at a time, so you're out of luck if you are troubleshooting a cluster with 2 Windows nodes. The work around is to create a number of duplicates of the program itself, so you can have multiple copies of the app running. This is lame.
2. Disconnecting from a remote machine quits the app: This is the most annoying aspect of RDC. So, I can't connect to more than one machine at the same time, no big deal. I'll just connect to one after the other. Sadly, RDC quits the moment you disconnect from a remote machine. This means you need to relaunch the program to connect to another machine. This is stupid.

Other than those two major complaints, I am very happy with RDC and hope to see a number of improvements in the forthcoming update (No, I don't have any idea when it is coming out).