Download: Teamviewer

There are many situations when it is easier to have something shown to you rather than explained over the phone and Teamviewer is an easy way to make this possible.

Read more articles about remote access.

It is free for personal use and it can either be installed as a normal program or this download can run as a portable app.

The main window can be used for both setting up a session and connecting to another computer. There is no need to sign up for an account with Teamviewer. Instead sessions are identified by a nine-digit number. Helpfully this appeared to stay the same on the different occaisions we tried it on a test computer. Even better, the password does change which goes a long way to keep the computer secure.

Connecting to another computer simply requires the session ID and the password. The ID is remembered from previous connections.

Once connected, the other computers desktop appears as a window. The wallpaper is disabled to improve performance.

A toolbar appears at the top of the window with some useful tools. It is used to send a Ctrl, Alt, Del command, send a particular key combination or even restart the computer. Other options can be changed to improve performance over slow connections and record the session.

There is a separate file transfer utility, which is very useful if you need to copy error logs or program updates.