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4 Tools to Help You Access Your PC When You’re Away

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Professionals today are busier than ever, traveling from work to home to meetings around town. Many small business owners find they’re spending more time on airplanes than at the office, as they work hard to network and attract new business.

All of this traveling means professionals are rarely afforded the luxury of being seated in front of a computer. Cloud-based travel apps can help you while on the road, but what if you arrive at your location, only to find the file you need is on the hard drive of your computer? Even if you can access your company servers from anywhere, a file saved to the computer itself will likely be inaccessible outside of the office. When that happens, here are a few cloud tools that can grant you access to the PC on your desk.

TeamViewer

This popular free app can be used to access a remote PC or conduct meetings and share your screen with attendees. One of the biggest benefits of TeamViewer is that no software is required on the client side, which means you can take over a PC without preparing ahead of time. You’ll simply need to ask someone nearby to enter a user ID and password to let you in. TeamViewer finds a way around firewalls and blocked ports to give you a connection every time.

Microsoft Remote Desktop

Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, Microsoft Remote Desktop is a free app that lets you control your PC from a phone or tablet via a secure connection. The app can even be used to hook up to a projector or external monitor to let you directly stream presentations from your work desktop to a projector located on the other side of the country.

SplashTop

SplashTop lets you remotely access your PC or Mac from a PC or mobile device, as well as mirror your iPad or Chromebook to any computer screen. The software isn’t free, with plans starting at $1.99 a month per user for the personal edition and $60 per user per year for the business edition.

Screens Connect

Using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, users can access a Windows, Mac, or Linux PC from anywhere. Screens Connect is $19.99, but it allows you to copy and paste items from host to guest and it comes with a customizable toolbar for easy session management.

In addition to being able to remotely access your own PC, these tools come in handy for helping colleagues or employees troubleshoot problems or learn software. As you find a favorite remote screen-sharing app, you’ll likely open up a suite of new possibilities for using the technology in your everyday life.

3 Great Tools for Remote PC Access

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For more than a decade, IT professionals have used remote desktop software to repair and troubleshoot PCs from afar. This software enables tech personnel to deploy software and repair issues for field staff who are unable to visit the office. Over time, it has also emerged as a popular tool for Managed IT Services providers, who can remotely troubleshoot PCs for a wide range of clients located across the globe.

But remote desktop software’s usefulness goes beyond the workplace. Imagine being able to remote in and work on the laptop of a relative who is located across the country. Imagine being able to remote into your own PC while on the road to retrieve an important file. These popular tools can give you the power of an IT pro, whether you need it for work or personal use.

Windows Remote Desktop Connection

This solution is popular for a fairly obvious reason: it’s built into the Windows operating system. By simply entering the workstation name of a PC connected to your network, you can control that device. However, Windows’ requirement that other PCs be on the network limits its usefulness. There is a workaround for this restriction, but it requires reconfiguring the router on the other end, and there are easier solutions.

TeamViewer

Free for personal use, TeamViewer lets a user connect to another computer over the Internet. The computer on the other end is given a code that they then share with the user who will be remoting in.

LogMeIn

The free version of LogMeIn allows users to connect to their own PCs to grab files, apps, and more. A central version of LogMeIn provides the ability to manage multiple computers at once, which allows for easy deployment of the same software to many PCs at the same time.

These remote desktop solutions give technology professionals and personal users the ability to manage a computer without being directly in front of it. This saves time and travel expenses, while freeing up IT pros to take care of other tasks.