Hands on: Taking remote control

I bought a new PC recently which, somewhat unexpectedly, came with two video interfaces - one digital and the other analogue.

That meant I could plug in both the flatscreen that came with the system, and the one from the PC I was replacing, giving me a really nice dual-display.

However, I still needed to use the older PC to run my accounts software and didn’t want to shell out for another monitor or a KVM switch, so instead opted for remote control to access the old machine over the Lan.

The end results turned out to be very workable, even though I put the old PC out in my boiler room, which I’ve connected to my main network using Homeplug adapters.

I configured a couple of different remote control utilities to get the kind of flexibility I wanted, starting with Remote Desktop, which comes as standard in Windows XP and Vista.

Remote Desktop
One of the issues with Remote Desktop is that it is only an option on Windows XP Professional, not XP Home.

However, the old PC had XP Pro installed so that wasn’t a problem - all I needed to do was make sure it was turned on.

I did this from the Control Panel by double-clicking the System icon (look under Performance and Maintenance, if you’re in the default Category view) then the tab marked Remote.

There are two options here - Remote Assistance, which lets you invite a third party to help you with a problem via email, and Remote Desktop, activated by clicking the tick box marked ‘Allow users to connect remotely to this computer’.

If you haven’t already assigned passwords to local user accounts you’ll be told to do so to prevent unauthorised remote access.

You can also restrict that access by clicking the button marked Select Remote Users, although on a small network such as mine security isn’t usually a big concern, and I didn’t bother with this option.

Client setup is straightforward, with the software needed (Remote Desktop Connection) usually already installed on most Windows XP (Pro and Home) and Vista PCs. On the Vista PC I was using, for example, I found it by going to the All Programs/Accessories menu.

If it’s not there you can add it via the Control Panel, and if you’re running an earlier implementation of Windows, a suitable client can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools/rdclientdl.mspx.

Whichever version you use, the Remote Desktop Connection client asks for the name or IP address of the PC to connect to, then opens a window to provide access to the desktop that would, otherwise, be displayed on the remote system’s own display.

Some fine-tuning is also possible. For example, by clicking the Options button you can resize the remote desktop and say how many colours to use.

Plus, with the latest implementation you can map local resources, such as the clipboard and printers as well as CD/DVD and hard disks, to the remote system.

On a network such as mine you’ll get performance levels on a par with using the PC with its own display, making for a very usable solution.

However, what you’re actually employing is a cut-down version of the multi-user Windows terminal server application which, in its more normal guise, enables multiple desktops to be hosted on a single Windows server, which can sometimes cause problems.