Tim Eck

Software Engineer, Terracotta, Inc.

At work I am a full time Java programmer and a part time sys-admin. Terracotta develops software to virtualize interactions between Java VMs, effectively making multiple JVMs transparently appear as one to the application. Terracotta unleashes Java from the I/O bottlenecks that hinder scalability, reliability, and performance in enterprise Java applications.

I first started using CRT™ as a replacement for the Telnet client that ships with Windows. I've always preferred to use Windows as my desktop OS, but a great deal of the work I do is on remote UNIX machines. Over the years, SecureCRT® has always been rock solid, and the terminal emulation has never missed a beat.

Although there are plenty of free and functional Secure Shell clients out there (PuTTY and cygwin come to mind), there are a number of features in SecureCRT that make it irreplaceable. The support for tabs in SecureCRT 5.0 is fabulous. Zmodem transfers are handy when I need to get/put files on remote servers (especially when I'm connected to remote servers through some twenty-hop port forward madness). Finally, I'd go crazy without being able to remap keys.

I've recently found a new use for the product. As many of you know, the native Windows command prompt window leaves a lot to be desired (no tabs, clumsy paste/select, limited font support, very slow scrolling, etc.). I am now running sshd (OpenSSH) on my local machine and use SecureCRT as the client. As a Java developer, I often need many terminal windows open and without SecureCRT, I'd really be suffering.

I've never hit a critical bug in the software (and I always run the latest beta releases). I also really appreciate the opportunity make suggestions for new features on the forums.