NX Impresses but Not Enough

I've been putting NX through its paces and, though the software is impressive in its scope, it is still buggy and the company behind it is unresponsive.

My evaluation of NX was based primarily on its ability to allow authenticated users to access and use the desktops of various systems (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows) remotely using reasonably fast Internet connectivity.

Pros

• I was able to install and run the required software on my Linux firewall box and install and run the client software on both a Mac OS X client machine and a Windows XP Pro client machine.
• I was able to establish an authenticated connection to the NX Server and run an KDE session on the NX Server machine. This connection was stable and performant.
• I was able to establish a tunnel through the NX Server to a Windows XP box using both VNC and RDP.

Cons

• On one of the remote Windows XP clients, I could only run the client and establish a connection to the NX Server one time. Subsequent attempts resulted in a cryptic error. After rebooting the machine, I could connect again, but only once before rebooting.
• An attempt to establish a VNC tunnel to a Mac OS X Tiger machine resulted in the Mac desktop starting to draw itself on the remote client, but then the client would simply shut down and disappear: no error message, warning, or other indication of a problem. I tried a couple of different VNC servers on the Mac without success.
• After establishing an RDP connection to a Windows XP desktop, I would see only the upper left-most portion of the remote desktop. This is not surprising since the desktop has a very large resolution (1600 x 1200), larger than the client desktop. However, no scroll bars were present to allow me to scroll to other portions of the desktop. Similarly, using VNC instead of RDP gave me scroll bars, but once scrolled, the scroll bars became unresponsive.
• The client initialization process takes quite a long time compared to Citrix clients I've used.

Summary These issues may very well be explainable and solvable, but NoMachine would not respond to my queries for guidance in troubleshooting these issues -- not even a courtesy response explaining that support is not available for evaluations. The online knowledge base has a small number of helpful documents and entries, but none were helpful in addressing my issues.

The personal edition of NX is not expensive, and the promise of the software is great, but the unreliablility of the software and the unresponsiveness of the company behind it make me regretfully recommend against NX. I had high hopes. I'm disappointed. I expect to see NX make progress and perhaps emerge as a viable product in the next few months, but I cannot recommend it today.

Update: 8-22-2005 I received a response from NoMachine today. Basically, they invited me to pony up some dough and use their professional services group to resolve my issues. Ok. At least they responded. But is this an effective way to market your product, NoMachine? Technology neophytes are not going to go through the non-trivial process of downloading and installing your software. Early adopters and technology influencers are downloading and evaluating these products at this point. Do you really want to tell these people (like me) that if you can't make our software work pay us some money and we'll show you how to make it work? If it gets to that point, the evaluation has failed, as mine did.

To be fair, the impersonal "NoMachine Staff" informed me that "all the information you provided has been forwarded to a pool of NX technicians. Depending on the results of the analysis, if any of the issues you reported will be considered worth [sic] of further investigation, you'll be contacted by email in the next few days." Oh really? You're going to decide if my issues with your software are "worthy" of further investigation? Wow! Thanks! Love that kind of customer-first attitude. Here's hoping my issues are worthy! (Fingers crossed.)