Soft Tech Reviews

Remote Desktop Connection is one of my favorite tools in Windows, because it allows me to connect to my desktop computer from my laptop when I don’t want to sit at my desk. But, if I wanted to be away from home, there just isn’t a way for me to access my home computer, unless I set it up differently.

Remote access is needed sometimes. This becomes easier when you don’t have to download any software and can do it directly from the browser.

RemotePC makes it easy to setup the host computer and the local computer. There are two separate Remote Access Host installs, one for Vista and one for other versions. I used the one for Vista. On the local computer, installing the Remote Access Viewer is also easy.

With RemotePC, you can invite a guest to access your host computer by sending an e-mail via RemotePC, which will send the guest a license to connect. This license will expire depending on what you choose. The license can be set to never expire as well. I like that, because if I knew I was going to be away from my computer for a long while, this would be a great way to give myself access without worrying that it would expire after a few hours.

On the local computer, you can access the host computer through Remote Access or a web browser. To do this, all you have to do is login to your RemotePC account on the website and it will list the available hosts for you to access. Before connecting, you need to know the host key that you initially created when setting up the host.

After the guest has disconnected, you can delete the license and invite another guest if you choose. If the license is going to expire, you can just let it expire or manually delete it by right clicking on the RemotePC icon in the system tray.

When you aren’t using RemotePC, disable it by right clicking on the icon in the system tray and a little x will appear over the icon. Nice way of knowing when RemotePC is enabled or disabled.

The RemotePC Viewer was a little slow on my laptop. I had to manually disable Aero, because RemotePC did not do this for me, it only disabled the wallpaper. Even after disabling Aero though, it was still a little slow with refreshing.

If you have files that you need to transfer between the host and local computers, RemotePC allows you to do this. This was very easy to do once I realized that Vista prevents me from saving in certain locations, so I just saved to an external hard drive. The file transfer didn’t popup any warning about the file not being transferred, because it had said it completed, even though it hadn’t.

Another product, Remote Meeting, looks like something the company I work for should have. It would be great for meetings with the employees who can’t make it into the office because they are sick or working from home. It includes some really nice features, such as showing/hiding the screen to/from select people. It also allows up to 10 people to share one desktop.

For me, if RemotePC was somewhat faster, it would be a favorite of mine. I’m always looking for ways to access my computer away from home.

Has anyone else used RemotePC and noticed it being slow? I’m curious if something I was running caused this slowness.

Sponsored by RemotePC