Remote Desktop Solution

Having a mobile office can have its pros and cons, one of the cons is not having every single file or document with you or on your laptop/netbook at all times. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with this scenario and have been forced to find a solution. So, I thought I would share.

What I found was Team Viewer 5, it is an excellent free solution to my problem. I simply have Team Viewer installed on both computers, initiate a session, usually from my netbook to my home computer and either drop the files I need in my Dropbox (also installed on both computers) or use the browser to upload them to Google Docs. This way I have access to them via the cloud or I can download them to my netbook.

By the way, if you are not using Dropbox or Google Docs and you have a mobile office, you really need to look into them, great tools for the toolbox.

Another nice feature is that you can enable, chat, VOIP or video chat during the sessions as well. So, it has many uses for collaboration and sharing as well as remote access.

Side note: It is also a great help in assisting your technologically challenged parents when they want to know where the “Any” key is.

There is only one caveat to the free price tag, you cannot use it for commercial purposes. In other words you cannot use it for your home technical support business without paying Team Viewer their due. So, play fair.

If you have found another solution, please feel free to share in the comments.

Comments

  1. Great tip DPatrickLewis. Thanks for sharing. I’ll check out Dropbox. I’ve been using Google Docs.

  2. RHUB is also another good collaboration/remote access tool. There is file transfer, so you don’t need to use a separate tool just to move files around. Also, you can also do web conferencing with it, making great for collaboration work. The only downside is that there is no free version, since it is more of a business product.

  3. Dropbox is a must… everything goes in there, then having access to all those files on my android phone app!! Makes life so much nicer.

    Also does palm have sugarsync? it is an android app that does the same thing as team viewer but with the android to computer.

    Know what I love about team viewer? you can see what is happening on the other computer… so should be called Teen viewer so we can watch what our kids are doing on their computers

    Now there is a good use!

  4. Just tried TeamViewer. Controlling my PC from my iPhone (with the free app) worked beautifully! Thanks for sharing this info. I also agree with using DropBox, love it for setting up “shared folders” to share files with friends/family that I wouldn’t want to bother with GoogleDocs 1 gig limit.

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