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If you work for a large firm, chances are good that you already have some way to access your office computer remotely; however, there may be situations where you need access to your home office computer or an assistant’s home office computer. For example, if you work on a PowerPoint presentation over the weekend, and forget to bring a copy to the office, you may have a problem. If you allow an assistant to work remotely from time to time, and you need to access something on their off-site computer, you may have a problem. Thankfully, there are many products that can help us stay securely connected these days. Today, we’ll look at one remote access solution called Laplink Everywhere 4.0.
Laplink Everywhere--An Introduction
Laplink Everywhere 4.0 claims to offer “anytime, anywhere remote access to you PC,” and for the most part, it delivers on its promise, but remote access means different things to different people. When I first heard about the product, I assumed that it was a direct competitor to GoToMyPC, offering remote desktop control. Laplink Everywhere does offer remote desktop control capabilities, but its true strengths lay elsewhere.
Laplink Everywhere really shines when it comes to remote access, as opposed to remote control. Remote control, a la GoToMyPC, is great if you need that sort of capability, but many readers simply want to be able to check their appointments in Outlook, find information about a contact, or view or download a file from a designated computer. Laplink Everywhere allows you to perform tasks such as these not only from another computer, but from Web-enabled PDAs and Smart Phones as well. It works with the Palm, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, and Symbian operating systems.
To access your computer remotely, you simply log on to the Laplink Everywhere Web site, enter your user name and password, and Laplink Everywhere main page appears, with a taskbar on the left of the your screen. The taskbar is divided into four sections: Remote Control, File Transfer, Utilities, and E-mail & PIM.
The Email & PIM section offers access to information stored in your PIM, provided that your PIM is either Outlook or Outlook Express. I tried the software with Outlook, and the software provided hotlinks to notes, contacts, mail, tasks, and the calendar. When I clicked the calendar, a list of the current day’s appointments displayed. Clicking an appointment displayed the details. I could add new appointments and edit existing ones using the Web interface. There was no need for full remote access to perform these tasks. The other modules in this section worked pretty much the same.
One utility gave me access to my Internet Favorites. The other utility in this section is a pretty nifty: a remote implementation of Google Desktop Search. In order for this to work, Google Desktop has to be installed on the host machine, but if it is, you can find any file on your computer in a flash remotely. When you locate what you are looking for, simply click the link and the file comes into view. The ability to search your entire host machine remotely with Google is very fast and convenient.
When you click the Start button in the file transfer section, you are offered two options: dual pane file transfer utility and the Web file transfer utility. The first option allows the user to view directory trees of the host computer and the remote computer side by side. If you want to copy a file from the host to the remote computer, you can simply drag and drop it from one tree to the other. The second option, the Web transfer, offers three methods of moving files: You can download them, e-mail them, or send a secure link. This last method is convenient for sending large files to a third party. Most e-mail systems have a size limitation for e-mail attachments; to transport files that are too large to e-mail as an attachment, you can instead a secure link that they can use to download the file.
Finally, there is remote access. This section offers three methods of connecting to the host PC: Remote Desktop, Remote Control 4, and VNC. Remote Desktop is convenient to use, but it requires Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2000/2003 with Terminal Services. Remote Control 4 is used to connect from Windows XP Home, 2000, ME, and 98SE. VNC is designed to work with Linux, Apple, and other operating systems. I tried out the Remote Desktop feature, and it worked as advertised.
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