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I do this daily, using TeamViewer, which works with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Ubuntu, iPhone, iPad, etc. It's very secure and quite simple to set up and use.... and it's free for personal use.
 
All the time

I do this all the time at home. I have a Dell laptop in the basement that is used as an iTunes server. I remote connect into all the time using the Apple Screen Sharing app, or sometimes, I use Chicken of the VNC. On the Dell, I run VNC Server.

Easy Peasy!

I guess if I had to remote into a PC at work, I'd have to get all of the ports open and such. But just copy over the info from the old PC and you should be fine.
 
I remote into my office PC and servers all the time from my iMac and formerly a MacBook Pro. I use some of the programs that GGJstudios already mentioned and I use the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection as well.

They all work fine for me. In fact I sometimes remote into the office from my iPhone using WinAdmin.
 
The remote desktop software from Microsoft offers some advantages over the regular VNC stuff, so check it out.
 

Just do some research regarding the differences between RDP protocol and VNC protocol.

IIRC, Advantages of RDP include:
- less bandwidth usage (does not send full bitmaps)
- less cpu usage (does not poll the video output)
- built in encryption (of course you can use an SSH tunnel for your VNC session)
- ability to create new user sessions (you can do this in Linux with VNC but doing so on a mac requires jumping thrugh some flaming hoops)
 
Just do some research regarding the differences between RDP protocol and VNC protocol.

IIRC, Advantages of RDP include:
- less bandwidth usage (does not send full bitmaps)
- less cpu usage (does not poll the video output)
- built in encryption (of course you can use an SSH tunnel for your VNC session)
TeamViewer uses full encryption, isn't a CPU or resource hog and can be adjusted to optimize speed or video quality. I still see no advantage to using Microsoft's RDS over TeamViewer.
 
I'm not familiar with TeamViewer but if it uses the VNC protocol it uses more CPU than RDP.

http://superuser.com/questions/32495/whats-the-difference-between-rdp-vs-vnc

This sums up my point quite well.

Anyway, After looking at the TeamViewer site, I would say it does not fall under the "regular VNC stuff" umbrella that rob was referring to.

In practice I use both VNC and RDP. I use a TightVNC setup to control the computer hooked up to the TV and RDP (via Windows 7 Ultimate) to manage the computer if someone is watching a show or movie on the console session. VNC is without exception slower than RDP, on the same network with the same machines.

Tell me, does the TeamViewer software allow you to start a new session on the server machine, or can you only connect to the console session? It seems interesting.
 
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And the even better standby that has low overhead is Cord. And free. Considering VNC isn't native to Windows and RDP is, one less thing to install or maintain on the server side.

http://cord.sourceforge.net/
 
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I use Microsoft's RDC. I use it casually and have had no issues, next to no features but it gets the job done.
 
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