i dont know what to call this as a title?

Magic_x_uk · 2 Jun 2011 at 20:20

hi.

I was thinking. Perhaps some clever people on ocuk can educate me on this

I have a desktop pc and a laptop at home. Both networked so i can see and use photos, music, files etc on either machine when at home.

Anyway for me to do this:---

if i was to say leave my desktop pc on at home.

go out to, for example a friends house 200 miles away with my laptop and connect to his/her internet connection.

Then somehow from my laptop be able to see, view, copy etc files on my home pc.

I am sure there is technicall wording for all this. So I am interested in if and how this is able to be perfomed.

I am using Win 7 on both machines.

thanks

hbk123 · 2 Jun 2011 at 20:43

Remote access? Try this, might be what you want: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

DIABLO · 2 Jun 2011 at 20:59

Remote Desktop is built into W7 professional and ultimate, if you're using home premium you can hack in support using this http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-e...connection-in-windows-7-home-premium-edition/

Zarf · 2 Jun 2011 at 21:12

Teamviewer is great in my experience, especially if there are a lot of different machines you might need to manage. LogMeIn is really good too, with a nice browser based viewer so you can use it without installing anything on your client, good for net cafes.

If you are confident with forwarding ports good old VNC works well, but isn't as smooth as Windows Remote Desktop.

AbsenceJam · 2 Jun 2011 at 22:06

You could alternatively just use a service such as Dropbox if you don't actually need full on remote access, just access to files.

Dabbles · 2 Jun 2011 at 22:06

Perhaps look up VPN, so it works like it does at home.

GaryH-21 · 2 Jun 2011 at 22:32

Neither VNC or Remote Desktop will give you access to copy your files as standard.

One way you could do it would be to use Remote Desktop and set up an FTP server for example - But then, how secure is this? Not very...

You could set up an SSH gateway to tunnel Remote Desktop through a secure connection to 'see' your computer', and at the same time, use SSH to securely transfer your files (Using a program like WinSSHD and a tunnel through PuTTy) This method is harder but more secure. I can help you set up if you decide to go down this path

Cycrow · 2 Jun 2011 at 23:02

if all you wanted was to download the files elsewhere, then i would look at running either and ftp or ssh server on your main pc

otherwise, u could use a vpn so your laptop is in the same network as your main pc no matter where it is

SeeKified · 2 Jun 2011 at 23:10

LogMeIn.

RoyMi6 · 3 Jun 2011 at 09:14

As others have said you've got a couple of options:

1) If you just want remote access to your files then looking at online backup solutions that continual sync with specific folders on your computer and make them available online might be an option. Dropbox is free for 2GB of backed up storage and works great.

2) Using remote desktop solutions like Windows built in RDP, open source alternatives like VNC or commercial products (with free versions) like LogMeIn work well when you want full control over you PC.

Specifically LogMeIn makes it very easy to set-up a very secure connection to your computer. RDP and VNC on their own are not unless used with a VPN (described blow)

However, the overheads associated with these types of applications always seem to make transfer speeds quite slow for me. I could have been doing something wrong but if I just want to copy a file off the computer (rather than view on it via remote desktop) then it would never max out my upstream bandwidth

3) Setting up an FTP server on your computer. If you want to just test this type of thing then it's very easy to install FileZilla Server, set up some port forwarding and connect via a FTP client from another machine.

If security is a consideration then your easiest option, in my experience, is setting up SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol). Again, the easiest way to do this is with an already mentioned client called WinSSHD.

Setting up just SFTP with WinSSHD is actually very straight forward.

4) WinSSHD can also provide you with VPN capability. This allows you to setup a secure connection from your home PC to your laptop. On this connection you could then use RDP and FTP safely.

At the moment I currently use Dropbox it to sync all my documents for my freelance work. WinSSHD SFTP server so that I can easily connect via SFTP on most computers without installing anything extra (used for accessing big files). Then I use the VPN functionality of WinSSHD combined with their Bitvise Tunneller installed on remote machines to setup a secure VPN connection that I can safely use MS RDP.

Roy