How can I reliably access windows from work?

[JonJ678]

I've spent today looking at ultrabooks and decided remote desktop probably makes more sense. I use a netbook / cheap laptop / work computer to connect to my desktop over the internet, and work as if I was sat at home.

I know latency won't be great, but I'm more worried about unwittingly providing strangers with access to my home computer. Is there a reasonably secure way to achieve this? Perhaps something similar to vnc over ssh from the unix world.

My best guess at the moment is to set up a vpn between wherever I am and home, and then connect over that using an inherently insecure service. Any better solutions out there?

 

[JonJ678]

Logmein appears to work through a browser - that's not good for performance or security. Thanks for the suggestion though. Teamviewer looks promising though, I'll read more about that one.

Hamachi looks like a zero-effort VPN. I think I used it to play red alert many years ago. Am I right in guessing that I'll see better performance from a direct point-to-point VPN?

VPN at home and remote desktop sounds like the closest match to using vnc. My router won't do that, but one of the computers sat behind it certainly would. Windows 7 professional - so no problems there.

Thanks for confirming that a VPN is probably what I want, whether through Hamachi or not. Work certainly has ssh access so that's probably ok. Thanks guys

 

[JonJ678]

I'm on virgin fibre, which is not a miracle of reliability. Their router has a modem only bridge mode so I can sit whatever I like behind it. I'll either get a sufficiently clever router to run the vpn or set up a *nix box to do much the same thing - I'll go and find a few reviews to see what the off the shelf kit can do these days.