Remote PC Questions

[Joe Diaz]

Does anyone here use some sort of Remote PC application? If so, what do you recommend?

Lets say I have a slower laptop at home. Not quite fast enough to handle some of the things I like to do. And I connect remotely to my PC at work which is a lot faster. Do the programs I see remotely on my laptop run at my PC's speeds? What role does the speed of my internet connection play? I'm getting cable at my new house and we have DSL at work.

If I'm trying to remotely run let's say Corel which is installed on my PC at work, do I have to have Corel installed on my laptop too?

Is there too much of a lag to even consider using it for this... Or is it mainly for moving files around and less about remotely controlling software.

I've never used anything like this before. Is there security issues I should be concerned about?

 

[omgsideburns]

Windows XP Pro, Vista, Etc... all have it built in.

There are settings to set resolution, colors, etc that are trasnferred.

It's not going to be fast enough to do graphics unless you're on the same network.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

If you know how to forward ports on your router, you can use the built in "remote desktop" and it is free. Otherwise, most of the major "remote" software are pretty good too.

You can use any applications that are on the remote PC, regardless of what you have at home.

The speeds will be at the speed of the remote computer, not the laptop.

Cable and DSL will provide an "OK" experience. Cable/Cable or Local Area would provide a better experience, but you should be fine most of the time. You are just transmitting video, keyboard, and mouse over the connection.

 

[cptcorn]

It's pretty much just video streaming from your desktop to laptop... Make sure you have solid upload speed and solid download... upload will hamper your performance more than anything.

 

[nbarrett]

I use the free version of logmein. Installs small apps on target pc and you can remote in from any web browser. All encrypted. The free version gives you everything that you will need to do except stuff like printing from the remote computer to your printer at home. Check it out.

 

[J Hill Designs]

I use it to access my router computer from my design PC - I just use windows netmeeting - I connect to a win98 machine accross my LAN and it is SLOW

 

[choucove]

I've used Windows Remote Desktop with several computers as it is the simplest and built right in to Windows. However, if you are planning to do any graphics work over your network connection, you may be sorely disappointed as the speed of the internet will make working on tasks slower than working directly on your laptop. No matter how slow your laptop is, it has got to be faster than trying to do graphic work at about 1 - 2 Mb/s over your standard DSL or Cable connection.

 

[Wildpony]

The programs will do the actual work at the speed of the remote computer, but there will be lag times from when you do something on the laptop, until the remote computer sees it. You will see a slow refresh rate on the remote session on the laptop.
With having my graphics business at home ,and my Girlfriend also running an in home business, I am running Windows Home Server on a dedicated server computer. Great for nightly backups, file sharing via LAN and internet, and also easy remote connection to the computers on my network (XP Pro & 7).

 

[jasonx]

Use Win VNC Here. Wouldn't be practical for working. But I used it to check my RIPS for ink outages or errors on big over night print runs. Even have it on my iphone

 

[Dan Antonelli]

Joe - I use LogMeIn.com - works fine.