Remote Control Software

[wine4all]

I am doing a free trial of web based remote control software for Windows based PC's called "Go To My PC" that seems to work really well even through corporate firewalls and across routers to different subnets. I am totally impressed. I have used PC Anywere POTS dial up for years and it is a great product but the speed I get over my cable modem connection to my PC at work is awesome even though it gets choked down through 4 channels of a T1 (256K). You might want to try this out .Go To My PC

 

[HomeLAN]

I saw a review of this about a week ago in the Wall Street Journal. Web based, so you can access from any web-enabled machine, right? Looked damned impressive.

 

[wine4all]

Yes, you access the "Go To My PC" website and login there with User ID and Password then select from your list of available host machines and are prompted for a second password directly from the host machine which is not stored on the website. It also uses 128 bit encryption during transmissions, seems very secure.

Unfortuneately, the little bit of software it downloads for client or host machine is Windows only. It did work flawlessly under Linux via the VMWare emulator.

 

[fury]

How much CPU time does it consume?

I have a program called "Remote Administration" that basically gives you complete control of a computer right down to the very last pixel and it works great, just the only problem I had with it was that it took up approximately 30% CPU time on the computer I was controlling it with. I'm not sure how much it was taking up on the computer I was controlling, because I had tried to enable file sharing on that computer (with the remote admin tool) and it locked up (the Windows install was screwed as well as the hard drive - so I gave it Linux )

 

[wine4all]

Not sure but will see if I can find out. For dialup connections I would still recommend PC Anywhere but it's Web connection requires the host machine to be outside the firewall.

 

[krusty]

Have you tried winVNC, it has a tiny footprint and is totally free.

Get it here...
winVNC

 

[wine4all]

VNC is great over LAN connections but sucks over dialup and does not provide a path through the firewall.

 

[a13antichrist]

Sounds like an interesting program; VNC has its advantages but as always it has its limitations also. My only concern is how much effort might be put into targeting this site to extract machine password details - after all, what's an easier way to get into someone else's machines than them simply leaving it open??

 

[wine4all]

Machine (host) passwords are not stored on the website, only your account password which is used to establish the connection to your host machine. The host machine does its own authentication once the connection is established.