Whether you're across the room or across the globe, there are various
methods of remotely accessing your box. If you know how to use a web
browser, then you already have the know-how to log into your, say,
office PC from anywhere.
You may not already know this, but
before the creation of remote desktop applications that make this sort
of thing a piece of cake, users were already remotely logging into their
boxes.
One way of doing this is via FTP, which is an acronym
for File Transfer Protocol. Put simply, you'd install an FTP server on
the computer you'd wish to log into and ensure that the FTP port,
usually port 21, is open so that you can access it remotely. Once your
FTP server is up and running on the host computer, you'd install and run
an FTP client from a PC in a remote location, 10 feet way or 100 miles
away, for example. The FTP client communicates with the FTP server,
effectively letting you log into a directory structure where you can
transfer files to and fro. FTP is not incredibly intuitive to use, but
it's one of the first examples of remotely accessing your computer.
Another more arcane example is called telnet. The process is basically
the same as FTP: a telnet server runs on the host computer while you'd
log into it via a telnet client. Telnet is even less intuitive than FTP
since it's all text-based, so if you're not used to command-line tools,
as many *NIX users are, you may dislike telnet from the get-go if you're
a Windows user. Nowadays, it's recommended that you use the more secure
SSH--secure shell--as it's less prone to exploits than telnet and much
safer to use from a security standpoint.
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As
technology inevitably marches on and improves upon itself evermore
increasingly, the web browser is becoming more and more the mother
application to run all children applications from, so to speak. Desktop
apps are being elbowed aside to make room for more convenient, web-based
apps that execute inside your favorite browser fluidly and without a
hitch, as web browsers are becoming more powerful and more intelligent
as processing power gets cheaper and new coding techniques, not to
mention standards, dictate the norm.
GoToMyPC is the number one
remote PC program on the market and it works on Mac;s and PC's. It comes
with a free 30 day trial and it is touted as a way to access your home
or office computer from anywhere you please. You're not simply limited
to a text-based shell interface or a crude representation of a
designated file structure from a remote location, but you're given the
full power to access all of your precious files and all your PC's
resources, graphically. Distantly log in from your home PC into your
work PC and grab your e-mails, documents and applications. As long as
your remote PC is internet-capable and has a web browser installed, then
you can access your distant PC that's running GoToMyPC. Of course, the
issue of security and exploits pop up when anyone talks about opening up
an Internet gateway into your PC; for peace of mind, GoToMyPC uses
128-bit AES encryption, so you can feel relatively secure using this
remote desktop solution.
The beauty of GoToMyPC is that it
installs over the web through a simple and sound process. You don't need
to install or download any bloated applets to communicate with your
host PC; you can use any web browser to do this task! A lot of desktop
solutions have issues running behind a firewall or proxy server, but
GoToMyPC doesn't have any problem running behind most security software.
One feature that comes in handy is the ability to allow guest access to
your remote PC, allowing you to set time limits for which guest access
should expire for an extra layer of security. Transferring files and
printing from a remote location has not been this easy, so if you're in
the market for a remote desktop app, give GoToMyPC a test drive.
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