Outstanding performance, average features, poor reliability
As with the old RDC 2.1.x client bundled with MS Office for Mac, performance of RDP is absolutely outstanding. Access to remote desktops, even on the other side of the country, is snappy and exhibits extremely low latency. The responsiveness of a remote connection makes administering remote systems a pleasure. Kudos to Microsoft for this.
On the downside, the connections in the main window cannot be sorted. As well, one cannot change the connections view, e.g., small/med. icons vs. details view. I administer around 20 desktops and its annoying that the main window presents the connections in order of entry. Having to search for a connection is bothersome when Id rather just scroll through an alphabetically-sorted list. Its 2014; surely, they can do a better UI than this. It would also be useful to be able to create a default template, as was the case with the old RDC 2.1.x client, from which to base all new connections. The obvious workaround is to duplicate an existing connection and edit it to suit the new requirements, but …. Finally, the inability to import RDC 2.x RDP connections is a monumental oversight. The lack of a migration path from RDC to the new MS Remote Desktop client is surprising and disappointing.
I want to give this 4 stars, but the annoyances are enough that I cant. The RDP connections FAR outperform Apples Remote Desktop/VNC connections, but the UI needs a lot of work.
Edited to add: The version 8.0.5 application constantly crashes when logging out of servers. Apparently, there were not enough bug fixes in the release. Im sorely tempted to drop my rating to two stars. Its just not good enough. :(
2014-07-31: Version 8.0.8 now adds incredible CPU load and constant crashes when logging out of servers. I have downgraded this to 2 stars in light of the constant issues with this software. Incredibly disappointing, considering that I use this junk daily in the course of administering Windows servers.
Trane Francks about Microsoft Remote Desktop 8, v8.0.8
