[wglr13mwz]

I am buying a Mini for my wife and I would like for her to have remote access to her desktop at home by tethering to her cell phone. She will be primarily using it for school work as she attends online. File transfers, and programs are the main need. My dilemma is fairly up front and simple. I have almost no experience with remote access software at all. I need a straight forward approach where the program does most of it for you.

I would also like to be able to access my moms computer (on DSL, wireless router) 85 miles from the house and her dads computer (don’t laugh, AOL dial up) over 1200 miles away. These need technical assistance. If you have ever had to help someone that says they are at the home screen, but really just clicking away while you try to direct them....then you know my anguish.

I am open minded to open source software as well as licensed software. However most of what I found to be more my speed was web based and had a monthly fee. I would rater not use web based.

Every computer is using XP home except for my work which is XP pro. Any advice would be great.

Thanks in advance.

[Fanfoot]

For remote access, VNC has always worked fine for me. I've used both TightVNC and RealVNC. TightVNC is open source and can be found at:

http://www.tightvnc.com/

RealVNC is free for personal use, and can be found at:

http://www.realvnc.com/

The free version of RealVNC does NOT offer file transfers, but their "Personal Edition" does offer it, as well as support for $30.00 US. Assuming you can figure out the file transfer yourself (set up permissions, firewall etc) then you may not care about that...

[wglr13mwz]

I appreciate your post Fanfoot. Last night while reading posts on the mydellmini forums, I started noticing a trend of people having servers. Not one for asking and waiting, I started searching on the web about servers at home and their significance. I found fairly quickly that I should have had a server about a year ago when I lost a 500GB drive that had my wife's info and pics on it. It wasn’t long before I found what I needed. A user friendly, low tech, remote access solution. Windows Home Server. HP makes two different spec. versions. We liked the redundancy feature, centralized I-Tunes (7500+ songs), picture sharing, and remote access to our files from anywhere. We chose the EX470 for the task. It was the cheapest on sale at Micro Center of the two then I added an additional 500GB drive with a ram upgrade from 512MB to 2GB. As soon as my wife finishes up her last class on a way to her Masters degree this week, then I will hook it up to our system.

I really look forward to utilizing this thing. We have 2 laptops and a desktop, nothing fancy other than the mini my wife is getting for Christmas . The only thing for me that I haven’t resolved is the remote access to the parents and in-laws for fixing their computer, but I think I can live with this solution. Remember one thing in life if you have to choose. A happy wife is a happy life!

Has anyone else used Windows Home Server? What are your experiences with it?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...r/default.mspx

What a great tool to use with your mini!!!

[DragonRider]

Just cause you have a server, it does not elimnate the need for backups. I have both a 2 TB NAS and a 1 TB Server, some of the data is duplicated on the server from the nas. I can answer better when I get back on monday, but a home server is a great thing.

The other option is to create a vpn tunnel and a mapped drive. That is generally what I do. I use DD-WRT, with a pptp vpn tunnel, mapped drive for when traveling and I upload my photos to myself at home, plus keeping a copy on the drive with me. Same idea would work for your wife, providing the vpn would work at the school if the school has a wifi.

John

[Qwerty3089]

logmein.com

great service and they offer a 'free' version (no sounds or file transfers). Been using it for a few years now. With the firefox plugin it runs like a top (they also have an iphone application which works very well)