When using the sharing feature the cursor blinks incessantly to the point of distraction?  Many people in my organization are experiencing this and have expressed concern and dissatisfaction with this "Feature". What is causing this and/or can this be turned off?

Hi,

this is a feature to show that some one is logged in to your PC remotely. the blink is there so that the person who logged in is still there even there's no activity on the PC. this cannot be turned off but you can move the cursor to some corner and leave it there.

 

Hi,kristenp25

This is by design caused by the Windows graphics device interface (GDI) used by the
remote desktop protocol that is used by desktop sharing.

When using the BitBlt function to capture the desktop screenshot with (CAPTUREBLT |
SRCCOPY) it causes the mouse cursor to blink. We have to use the CAPTUREBLT value
in this function as otherwise things like the taskbar would not show up in the
shared desktop.You can check the following article for the GDI specifics explaination.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.02.windowsconfidential.aspx

Regards,

Sharon

The technical reasons for it are fine and all, but can it at least be marked as a bug to be fixed?

Besides being a generally terrible user experience -- it's extremely distracting and fatiguing when doing any kind of desktop sharing for any significant amount of time -- it just seems to be extremely poor software engineering.  Neither of Microsoft's previous "desktop sharing" (Netmeeting, Livemeeting) products had the same issue, and neither has any other commercial software product that I have used.  It seems to be, in all ways, a regression from previous software.

I get the minor little blipping of the cursor that shows someone is attached.  It's almost unnoticeable unless you're looking for it.

That's not the problem.  A couple of my users get a very serious, rapid, major blinking, such that it is difficult to precisely navigate the cursor on the screen.  Seizure-inducing blinking.  Most of my users do not get that.  The user on the far end of the sharing session does not see it.   Just the user who is sharing out their screen.  Doesn't matter if they choose main or secondary monitor, or both.

You can't seriously be telling me that is a "feature".

It is very distracting when trying to lead and update documents during the session. I realize it is to alert the person sharing that they are sharing, but they need to implement a better solution.  

This is not only annoying but it affects keystrokes.  Just this morning I locked out my account attempting to login to an RDP session.  The flashing cursor and all the overhead it creates needs to go away.  

Your answer and the linked article explains why the use of the specific technique causes the problem.  Clearly, however, this isn't the only approach as their are other products (e.g. Lotus Sametime) that have similar to identical screen sharing capabilities without this issue.