[iBook] Remote access

[Andy McMullin]

On Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 11:36AM, Janice F. Jorgensen <janicejorgensen at charter.net> wrote:

>I would like to be able to get into a PC with windows 2000  at my home when
>I am traveling from my ibook with os x 10.2.8.
>
>thanks
>Janice

Janice,

What you wish to do is achievable but there is a number of issue that need to be dealt with. 

First, how does the machine at home connect to the internet (if at all)? The question relates to creating the connection between your portable and your home machine. If you have a broadband or other link to home that has a consistant IP address things aren't too difficult, if you have a link such that the home machine dials up, then you need some way to make it dial and some way to find out which address it has been allocated once it has connected. These latter two are not impossible but can be difficult.

As an alternative, your home machine might have a modem and your portable dial into it. However, this method is not really using the internet and many internet tools won't work over such a link (without some work on the PC).

Once you have the physical link, there is a number of software systems that can let one machine control another. As was mentioned in one of the previous mailings, VNC is one such package. VNC will require some effort to set up, but it works fairly well particularly over slow connections. 

It is unfortunate that your PC is running Windows 2000 not XP Professional or 2000 server because Microsoft have a very nice package called "Remote Desktop Client" (see http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient) which is what I use to control a number of machines. It's free and I find it works very well.

Both of these packages are intended to let you control the PC as though you were sitting at its keyboard and viewing its screen. However, if all you want to do is copy files from or to the PC much simpler methods exist.

I hope this helps. If you'd like to "discuss" it further off-line, drop me a personal e-mail.

Regards
Andy, G8TQH
http://www.rickham.net/