OT: Remote access software: comments/recommendations?

[Allan]

I'm looking for some remote access software, for home use, just want to work on files between home & my Mum's (fed up with carting files back and forth on a USB stick and not knowing which version is which). The market seems to be covered by: pcanywhere gotomypc logmein teamviewer Anyone got any thoughts/comments/recommendations on the above or any other providers? I have thought about Google docs (or equivalent) but that requires the extra step of knowing what files you want and putting them into google docs - a third storage area to get confused over); I have taken a quick look at the new Google Drive as well (but something in me resents giving lots of my data to Google) TIA Allan

[philipuk]

If you just want to share files between PC's over t'internet then Dropbox is excellent (but you will have to put them in a specific folder).

For a remote desktop then one of the VNC's will do the job. Or windows has built in Remote Desktop called various things in the various flavours of windows (look for Remote Assistance). You'll need to configure your router to route the correct ports to the PC you wish to access. Enabling remote desktop is a big security risk, so do be careful.

Philip

[John]

Allan brought next idea :

Teamviewer is absolutely brilliant. No farting about opening ports or configuring routers, it just works 'straight out of the box', cleanly and efficiently, and it's also free of charge for personal use.

There is a file transfer facility but it's so much more than that. I first used it to help my mother-in-law who lives 90 miles away but I also now use it to help my brother in the USA and sister-in-law in France as well.

You have the Teamviewer Full Version installed on your machine, then just get your mum (or whoever needs help) to download the Teamviewer Quick Support module and run it - in less than two minutes you have full remote access. You really will not be disappointed, it's truly brilliant. :D

[Brian Gaff]

Surely one can tell which is the latest by its date and time stamp, then just use dropbox as a single point stor on both machines. The problem of course is that if both people edit the file locally then the one who saved it last is the one on both machines. However Dropbox does seem to have a history to enable recovery of older versions if you are working collaborativeely.

as for data being on other servers, well yes, I think Dropbox use several sources including Amazon, but its supposed to be secure. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes and if either end is using some blind access software then the virtual desktop is not accessible either. Its just a bitmap of the desktop not really real so to speak. Brian

[JIP]

Totally agree - I use it with various friends to access their computers in times of need. You can use it for simple file transfer, or to take over control of their PC to see what's going on when they report problems, and to fix the problems if you know how.

JIP

[Lobster]

+1 - and for 'remote control' of another computer, it's infinitely better than the Windows built-in 'Remote Assistance'. David

[geoff]

Agree

I even used it to keep tabs on things when I was in Indonesia ()despite the crap bandwidth)

[chris French]

There are Dropbox alternatives that will let you add any folders to be synced. Sugarsync for one IIRC.

[Apellation Controlee]

Or just sign up to the free service at LogMeIn.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

No; both versions will exist on both machines, but one of them will have "conflicted copy" appended to its name.

There are some other types of conflict that can happen too, especially if you have Dropbox folders on different OSes, eg Linux & Windows - see details at:

of the things I dislike about Dropbox is that the desktop client doesn't warn you if conflicted copies of files exist, so every week or two I run a search of my Dropbox folder (which has about 150,000 files in it) looking for any file which has "conflic" in its name; usually the only thing I find is the search-utility's saved search-criteria file, which has a meaningful name that also includes "conflicted"...

[Mike Barnes]

Jeremy Nicoll - news posts :

That's good - gives you some confidence that the search is working.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]