Microsoft Remote Desktop 4+

Overall pretty good and reliable.

Good to see Jan 2022 update attempted to resolve the issue with the new 2021 MBP "notch" interfering with the blue RDP toolbar that appears in full screen mode ... essentially by making the Apple menu bar permanent. But wondering if we can get that behaviour (permanent display of Apple menu bar) set as an option in preferences. Although the original behaviour was problematic at times - it turns out that having REAL full screen gave a little more screen real estate and a crisper display when remote connected to my work PC.

I've been using this for many years now to adminsiter many Windows servers.

The main positive is that it works properly with Mac DPI scaling. This is an awesome feature. I can wind up the resolution for a session that needs real estate, or turn it down to be more comfortable if it doesn't - all nicely anti-aliased/supersampled. Absolutely A for this alone. It's miles ahead of the Windows client.

My main negative: If I lose my network connection, terminated sessions bounce away in the Dock and force me to click a dialog letting me know the session was terminated. If I had 5-6 sessions open this is a pain and pointless. I can't even Command-Q to close out without clicking each and every one. Imo, there should be an option for these to be transient notifications, not hard popups.

I have the version 8 and version 10 side by side.

I have over 80 Remote Desktops links and by far it’s far better layed out in Version 8 than with 10 which is just one huge list (or view them “by icons”) - so if you have more than say 4 Remote Desktops you connect to regularly, your going to see a list of “fine print” names without contrasting “darker” backgrounds every second connection - which really makes it easier to see.

I’m sure “under the hood” there’s been changes with version 10 which are nice - but I’m yet to read anything in the notes which makes this a “must have, upgrade”.

Still to find the “redirect printing to a local printer” option work - I’ve imported all my 87 sites (yes - 87) and find it doesn’t print to my local printer (even though the only option I can see is ticked in Remote Desktop 10 but it’s not clear if that is the one). So I might need to read a manual here - if I can find what Microsoft call this feature in the DOCUMENTATION SEARCH as it’s sure not finding “FORWARD PRINTING DEVICES” as it was called before in version 8. Sigh - changes like Microsoft did to Skype - change the entire look so everyone goes “what’s happening - where is….?”. Change for the sake of “makeover” for the look and feel of other products?