I recently stumbled on an excellent project hosted on CodePlex, Terminals. Literally its a replacement client for your RDP connections (mstsc.exe, tsadmin.exe). The biggest benefit this one brings is the ability to create a favorites list and maintain that. It writes all of your configuration data to its own configuration file so it is very portable. Stuff it onto your USB Pen drive and pack all of your common connections around with you. Exteremly valuable.

I recently got added to the list of developers for the project so I went on a coding bender and added the ability to also connect to VNC, Telent, SSH, VMRC, and even your locally configured RAS (VPN) connections. Think of it, tabbed browsing for all of these types of connections.  Right click, connect to your VPN at work.  Right click again, connect to your server.  All within the same application.

Since the default tools which come with windows, for example RAS dial up connections are so damn easy to exploit (password “recovery”) using this tool actually gives you the ability to save your passwords safely. I personally added a farily large security enhancement to the project which protects the application with a Master Password (if you are familiar with Thunderbird's Master Password). A single password when the application starts unlocks the rest.

Last night, in my local copy, I added the ability to connect to the local console and even PowerShell. Literally a Windows Forms hosted Command Line Interpreter (CLI). Within the Terminals application itself, you can have a few console windows open doing a variety of tasks.

Official Releases Page

This does not include the multiple connection types. It was released before I got my dirty little hands on it.

Un-Official Releases Page

This includes:

1. The latest build from Source (updated within 30seconds of any commit to the repository)

2. Some screen shots

3. My prototype build of the CLI integration within terminals.

    -You will need to install PowerShell before running this build

4. A download link for PowerShell

DriverGrabber

The second tool I want to mention, which I just stumbled across this morning is “Driver Grabber”. It will scan your machine for all drivers in use and gather them all up in to a “Drivers” folder. If you have ever needed to repave a machine and found yourself looking for drivers after the fact, simply use this tool to nab a copy of all of them and stuff them on a USB Drive or share -BEFORE you hit the format button of course.

Download it here

1 Comment

• Dudu Shmaya said Friday, April 13, 2007 4:34:29 AM

  Great work Rob. I'm really glad you've joined the project. I added a link to your Blog on Terminal's main page.