> -----Original Message----- > From: Steven J. Sobol [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 9:11 AM > To: Justin Tibbs > Cc: Matthew Carpenter; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: windows ssh client > > > On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Justin Tibbs wrote: > > > I use PuTTY which has turned out to be a great client, can > find it by > > searching in google, its a self contained Client .exe > file.. not dlls > > etc.. just my two cents. > > http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty > > Requires absolutely no DLLs to run, and is only 330K. It's wonderful. >
PuTTY is an excellent program. It works well, is free, and is easy for an administrator to move from machine to machine. It does have some disadvantages. The user interface is odd. Not neccisarily bad, but different than most, and counter-intuitive in several places. The "all in one exe" is good for people who need to stick it on a box quickly, but not as good if you want to deploy it enterprise wide. You wind up having to do some things to make it visible to the user, which a normal setup program does. The user-education curve is steep and difficult. If you want novice or non-technical users to use SSH successfully, you might consider a program which has a more traditional Windows UI, and does things like show up in the Start menu and installs and uninstalls "normally" via a setup program and the control panel's Remove tool. I've had good experiences with CRT, and have heard SecureCRT is as good. VanDyke offers several interesting SSH-related products. http://www.vandyke.com/. Everything is a trade-off. PuTTY is small, simple, and free, but it's UI is strange and installing it is a mystery for "normal" users. SecureCRT has a polished UI, supports more termianl emulations, and is a "normal" Windows application, but it costs money. Lou Erickson IT Tools Developer Ariba, Inc.
