Quote: Leevil @ March 11 2010, 2:26 PM GMT
Anyone know how or what software to use to do a remote connection between a Mac and a Vista Home PC?
There's quite a few options out there, some free some pay. Just wondering if there's an inbuilt easier option or something?
Tiger 10.4 to Vista Home Edition Laptop.
Cheers!
For a FREE solution i.e. not going thro commercial orgs like LETMEIN:
First. Do you want full unattended remote control of the PC or will there be someone there to click YES when the remote asks permission?
If the latter you may be able to find a remote desktop Client for the Mac. Since MAC O?S is a version of Unix, you may need to look in Unix or Linux circles if you can't find anything specific for a Mac.
In general Microsoft HOME versions of their O/S require a user at the slaved computer to grant permission, i.e it is intended as a HELP facility.. Whereas PRO editions rely on logging in to get control i.e intended as a remote working facility.
If you want remote unattended access to an MS Home pc you can install a VNC server software, there are many versions such as TinyVNC, UltraVNC. Then you need to find a VNC client for the Mac. When I was last trying this there was only one version of VNC for MAC, but that was before MAC OS X, nowadays there are probably many versions derived from Unix/Linux editions. There may even be one built into MAC OS X.
Computers running VNC servers can also usually be controlled by a JAVA edition of the VNC client, whereby the client is sent from the server (controlled computer) to the controlling computer. To do this you open a web browser (safari on a Mac) and access the controlled computer by its IP address and port 5800. If it is on your local network and its local IP address is say 192.168.1.35 this is what you would type into the address bar of Safari http://192.168.1.35:5800/ In the Windows Firewall you need to allow port 5800 in.
If you need to cross the Internet then you also need to set the router of the owner of the controlled computer so that its firewall will let port 5800 in and ALSO that it does a "Port-Forward" of port 5800 to the local IP address of the computer to be controlled. In this case you need to find the EXTERNAL IP address of the router and it is that address that you use instead. eg suppose it was 74.125.39.105 then you would type
http://74.125.39.105:5800/
into Safari's address bar.
Unlike Remote Desktop Protocol, the VNC protocol is not itself encrypted, so is vulnerable to lurkers peeking your packets. If that could be a problem you would first create an encrypted tunnel (a VPN connection) and use VNC through the tunnel, butthat's another whole ballgame.
