Looking to use my PC from my macbook

[shshchch]

Hey guys, so I've posted about this on a pc forum only to get unhelpful replies, including criticizing my desire to break company rules and standards, so I'd like to see what y'all think.

I work at home for a company that requires I use the PC they provided me, and IT is very strict about not installing anything, keeping everything standard, etc. But seeing as how some of my favorite things about mac is the design and minimalism, I hate having this big tacky lenovo desktop in my workspace.

They use Logmein Pro2 to monitor the computers, get alerted with installs, etc., but I'm wondering what ideas you guys have for eliminating this huge ugly piece of equipment. If there's a way to hide it somewhere and get the display and control routed to my mac, I found a vga-usb video capture device but it's $300. I figure VNC and similar progs will be too slow to work on for 8 hours a day. But if that may be the best option, what is the fastest setup with little to no lag?

I've tried imaging the winxp and running it on virtual box on the mac only to be halted at a black screen. Anybody have ideas on why that might be happening?

Cheap and/or free ideas preferred, what do you guys think? Need any more info?

 

[GGJstudios]

I prefer using TeamViewer

 

[shshchch]

I prefer using TeamViewer

I've heard of it before, is it fast? The thing is they're on the same network, so if I have to use a remote access, I would want one that would take advantage of that, unlike logmein. Also as I said Logmein sends IT an e-mail whenever we install anything in the traditional manner, and of course they already don't like me much, however I've ran programs off usb drives without a problem.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Boring old productivity apps will work fine over remote screen. Actually I use the remote desktop client that comes with office (though is available freely) to connect to my headless workstations and servers in the data center (win xp, 7, 2008 server etc ).

If you wanna try and be really bad a*s you can p2v your work box and create an image that you can use with fusion on your macbook. Be forewarned that IT will not appreciate this level of savvy and will either try to terminate you or have you join them.

 

[calderone]

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client

Only problem is if they use GPO to control the machines. Are you an admin on the Windows box?

 

[GGJstudios]

I've heard of it before, is it fast? The thing is they're on the same network, so if I have to use a remote access, I would want one that would take advantage of that, unlike logmein. Also as I said Logmein sends IT an e-mail whenever we install anything in the traditional manner, and of course they already don't like me much, however I've ran programs off usb drives without a problem.

Yes, it's fast. I use it daily to support Windows clients.

 

[shshchch]

Boring old productivity apps will work fine over remote screen. Actually I use the remote desktop client that comes with office (though is available freely) to connect to my headless workstations and servers in the data center (win xp, 7, 2008 server etc ).

If you wanna try and be really bad a*s you can p2v your work box and create an image that you can use with fusion on your macbook. Be forewarned that IT will not appreciate this level of savvy and will either try to terminate you or have you join them.

This job is an inbound call center job, so these calls are almost back to back, have to keep a low handle time, their system is already pretty slow. And that's actually what I did a while back, used disk2vhd on a flash drive and created an image, but when i try to run it on the macbook virtualbox, it just goes to a blank black screen. So then I tried to use the vmware converter on the pc to create the image, which I actually installed, was able to create the image, and then they saw the alert of the program being installed, one of the many reasons they don't like me very much. But same thing with that image, black screen, and I'd tried troubleshooting/messing a bit to no avail. I may try again, it seems like the best route but if i'm successful, they might easily find out that I'm not using their hardware.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client

Only problem is if they use GPO to control the machines. Are you an admin on the Windows box?

Yes, my account is admin, but with certain restrictions here and there, unable to alter certain settings, etc. The Logmein system they use is kind of a betch, it sent them an e-mail detailing specifically what program I installed, and it allows them to remote in at any time.



Btw, thanks for the input, this is much better than the other forum.

 

[calderone]

Yes, my account is admin, but with certain restrictions here and there, unable to alter certain settings, etc. The Logmein system they use is kind of a betch, it sent them an e-mail detailing specifically what program I installed, and it allows them to remote in at any time.



Btw, thanks for the input, this is much better than the other forum.

So, to use Remote Desktop Connection, you will need top enable RDP:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/turn-on-remote-desktop-in-windows-vista/

As I mentioned, if they using GPO to manage the machines, they may disable RDP. The big advantage here is that you don't have to install anything.

 

[shshchch]

So, to use Remote Desktop Connection, you will need top enable RDP:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/turn-on-remote-desktop-in-windows-vista/

As I mentioned, if they using GPO to manage the machines, they may disable RDP. The big advantage here is that you don't have to install anything.

I got it to work, it's pretty fast esp compared to logmein (it was easy for me to use that bc they already had it installed and I invited myself as a guest)

The only problem is that I have to connect to a vpn, while it was on vpn I wasn't able to remote in.