Laptop for RDP

[CoinDuckling369]

Hello LTT Community,

 

i need a cheap laptop for school,

i have my build at home with Windows 10 Pro and i want to remote acces it.

What Chromebook or a other budget laptop <600$ Be good for

with Chromebook i can use chrome remote desktop and Windows i can use RDP but what should you advice?

 

Thanks,

~Sven

[Light-Yagami]

Chromebooks have limitations. 

I would rather take a windows laptop..

For 600USD, I'd look into used market. Workstations with 4gen i7 CPUs can will sell in that range..

A new laptop will underperform.. And will probably be straight up crap. But a 2-3 yo laptops that were 1000+USD when new will sell in that price range.

Take a look

 

If you want a chromebook, DaveLee on youtube has some great reviews of various chromebooks

[Droidbot]

RDP is hell over inconsistent networks (school WiFi for example)

 

In the 14" range, I'd recommend a Lenovo T430 or T440p, or a Dell E6430/40. 

[LtStaffel]

Would not recommend this strategy because you will be opening a remote desktop service onto the internet and I can guarantee that that will not go well. Please use teamviewer, which you can get on any platform (Even your phone!! ). Get something cheap that works because you don't need tons of power (Maybe something like @Light-Yagami said) and spend the excess on a good wifi adapter to increase range and stuff. Maybe get a mouse too

[Droidbot]

3 minutes ago, LtStaffel said:

Would not recommend this strategy because you will be opening a remote desktop service onto the internet and I can guarantee that that will not go will. Please use teamviewer, which you can get on any platform (Even your phone!! ). Get something cheap that works because you don't need tons of power (Maybe something like @Light-Yagami said) and spend the excess on a good wifi adapter to increase range and stuff. Maybe get a mouse too

It's RDP. It uses the same authentication system as Windows does, and since around Windows Server 2008R2, it's fairly secure, especially when compared to TeamViewer. 

[LtStaffel]

10 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

It's RDP. It uses the same authentication system as Windows does, and since around Windows Server 2008R2, it's fairly secure, especially when compared to TeamViewer. 

*cough* I heartily disagree. Windows is incredibly insecure and RDP exploits are all over the place (most tools literally come with databases of exploits aimed at ssh, vnc, and rdp) and those just don't exist for teamviewer. If teamviewere was more vulnerable than RDP, we'd hear about it all the time. But we don't.

[Droidbot]

2 hours ago, LtStaffel said:

*cough* I heartily disagree. Windows is incredibly insecure and RDP exploits are all over the place (most tools literally come with databases of exploits aimed at ssh, vnc, and rdp) and those just don't exist for teamviewer. If teamviewere was more vulnerable than RDP, we'd hear about it all the time. But we don't.

Yes, and those public exploits don't work on anything above 2008r1..

 

as long as you have a secure password and a cert to verify server integrity, you're set.. 2fa using duo is good too

 

also, the amount of unattended access hacking reports for tv kept me away from it (2016)

[KuJoe]

As somebody who relies on RDP every day (I'm using a Windows VM to type this reply) I can attest that any hardware will do. Literally any laptop you can find will work if you can install an RDP app. I use RDP on my phone and Raspberry Pi frequently.

 

A $200 netbook would be your best bet, RDP requires very little resources and their battery life is a bonus. A Chromebook will also work IF you get one that supports installing apps from the Google Play store (the Microsoft RDP app for Android is awesome and supports the higher security levels of Windows 7+).

 

Lastly, if you're going to leave your Windows box open to the world via RDP here are some suggestions to better secure it:

• Change your RDP port, this will stop 99.999999% of non-targeted attacks (i.e. the bots that scan IPs looking for port 3389 and filling up your logs with brute force attacks and exploits). I recommend something like port 80 or 443 so you can bypass firewalls.
• Setup Two Factor Authentication, I use DuoSecurity because it's free and works amazingly.
• Setup Dynamic DNS on your home connection so you don't need to know your IP since it could change.
• Keep the Windows box up-to-date, if it's going to be public facing you want it to receive and apply updates as soon as they're available.

[CoinDuckling369]

8 hours ago, KuJoe said:

As somebody who relies on RDP every day (I'm using a Windows VM to type this reply) I can attest that any hardware will do. Literally any laptop you can find will work if you can install an RDP app. I use RDP on my phone and Raspberry Pi frequently.

 

A $200 netbook would be your best bet, RDP requires very little resources and their battery life is a bonus. A Chromebook will also work IF you get one that supports installing apps from the Google Play store (the Microsoft RDP app for Android is awesome and supports the higher security levels of Windows 7+).

 

Lastly, if you're going to leave your Windows box open to the world via RDP here are some suggestions to better secure it:

• Change your RDP port, this will stop 99.999999% of non-targeted attacks (i.e. the bots that scan IPs looking for port 3389 and filling up your logs with brute force attacks and exploits). I recommend something like port 80 or 443 so you can bypass firewalls.
• Setup Two Factor Authentication, I use DuoSecurity because it's free and works amazingly.
• Setup Dynamic DNS on your home connection so you don't need to know your IP since it could change.
• Keep the Windows box up-to-date, if it's going to be public facing you want it to receive and apply updates as soon as they're available.

So you can use Windows 10 RDP even on Raspberry Pi?

[KuJoe]

4 hours ago, CoinDuckling369 said:

So you can use Windows 10 RDP even on Raspberry Pi?

Yup, there are very few OSes that do not have some form of RDP app. For Linux (i.e. Raspberry Pi) I recommend remmina for RDP since it supports the highest level of security and performs faster than the others I've tried. I actually have a video on YouTube of my connecting to a Windows 7 VM from my Raspberry Pi 2 and it's my most popular video.