Mac to Mac remote desktop

[candyman]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a solution to help me control my parents iBook remotely. I have read into Apple's Remote Desktop but to be honest it costs too much to justify purchasing it for as little as I would be using it.

When I get that phone call that they don't know how to do something think they've broke it (they are new to the Mac OS), I would love to find an easy way similar to gotomypc.com to be able to remotely log into their iBook from my Mac and control it and let them see what I am doing to answer their question.

I am not all that knowledged in the VNC porting end either as I have tried to use Chicken of the VNC and could not figure out how to get around both our wireless networks. Plus the security issues are a concern as I would rather not put our machines at risk due to my mistakes of not setting it up properly.

I have seen my dad's business PC's flawlessly remote with gotomypc.com and would hope there is something similar as easy for the Mac computer.

Will Leopard offer a much easier way to remote between Macs when it is released? What would be my best solution for the time being? What is your take on LogMeIn.com?

Thanks in advance for all your help and suggestions!

 

[bmcgonag]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a solution to help me control my parents iBook remotely. I have read into Apple's Remote Desktop but to be honest it costs too much to justify purchasing it for as little as I would be using it.

When I get that phone call that they don't know how to do something think they've broke it (they are new to the Mac OS), I would love to find an easy way similar to gotomypc.com to be able to remotely log into their iBook from my Mac and control it and let them see what I am doing to answer their question.

I am not all that knowledged in the VNC porting end either as I have tried to use Chicken of the VNC and could not figure out how to get around both our wireless networks. Plus the security issues are a concern as I would rather not put our machines at risk due to my mistakes of not setting it up properly.

I have seen my dad's business PC's flawlessly remote with gotomypc.com and would hope there is something similar as easy for the Mac computer.

Will Leopard offer a much easier way to remote between Macs when it is released? What would be my best solution for the time being? What is your take on LogMeIn.com?

Thanks in advance for all your help and suggestions!

try LogMeIn, i think at logmein.com....let's you do it through the web.

Brian

 

[CPPhoto]

leopard will have built in fuctionality for this i believe

 

[hayduke]

One thing you can do is enable Apple Remote Desktop on their laptop. This is available System Preferences --> Sharing --> Firewall. You don't need to install ANYTHING on their machine. This should be as safe and secure as anything else that is Apple's.

I would stick with Chicken of the VNC on your end. You should be able to connect to their machine without a problem. What you'll need to know, however, is their IP address of the router connected to their service provider. If they have Cable or DSL this should be (relatively) static. If there are a number of machines (more than one) on their home network, then you will have to set up their router to route ARD traffic to their laptop. This can be tricky if their laptop doesn't always have the same IP within their own network.

If you don't want to pay of ARD (I wouldn't...I don't think it is any easier to set-up), then I would give the above a shot.

 

[AdmiralNimitz]

I am using SpyMe by ReadPixel. It works great. I use DynDNS.org so I can access my home machine and laptop no matter what my IP address is. (I use DNSUpdate to keep DynDNS.org informed.)

ScreenCastsOnline has an excellent, free vid cast that tells you about the software and how to set it up.

Another nice feature of SpyMe is the "Support Center". It allows my laptop to act as the support center and then, when my parents need help with their computer, they send me their help request and I just click a button and remote into them. I set up the support center settings to use my DynDNS URL and that way there is no need to know my IP address in advance.

Lastly, it can run as a daemon on the host (remote) machine, so you don't have to have the application running all the time. This is great for a headless G4 that I have

Good Luck.

 

[Le Big Mac]

One thing you can do is enable Apple Remote Desktop on their laptop. This is available System Preferences --> Sharing --> Firewall. You don't need to install ANYTHING on their machine. This should be as safe and secure as anything else that is Apple's.

I would stick with Chicken of the VNC on your end. You should be able to connect to their machine without a problem. What you'll need to know, however, is their IP address of the router connected to their service provider. If they have Cable or DSL this should be (relatively) static. If there are a number of machines (more than one) on their home network, then you will have to set up their router to route ARD traffic to their laptop. This can be tricky if their laptop doesn't always have the same IP within their own network.

If you don't want to pay of ARD (I wouldn't...I don't think it is any easier to set-up), then I would give the above a shot.

I agree. I don't think setting up Chicken of the VNC is any more difficult or less secure than using ARD. ARD provides only an improved user interface and features, at a big price. There are a number of tutorials out there on how to set this up--I've done it with my mom, and it works quite well.

 

[KershMan]

One thing you can do is enable Apple Remote Desktop on their laptop. This is available System Preferences --> Sharing --> Firewall. You don't need to install ANYTHING on their machine. This should be as safe and secure as anything else that is Apple's.

I would stick with Chicken of the VNC on your end. You should be able to connect to their machine without a problem. What you'll need to know, however, is their IP address of the router connected to their service provider. If they have Cable or DSL this should be (relatively) static. If there are a number of machines (more than one) on their home network, then you will have to set up their router to route ARD traffic to their laptop. This can be tricky if their laptop doesn't always have the same IP within their own network.

If you don't want to pay of ARD (I wouldn't...I don't think it is any easier to set-up), then I would give the above a shot.

Slow down here, you need to be very careful with this advice. This will open a tunnel over the ARD ports that anyone on the Internet could connect to. If Chicken of the VNC is not setup to use ssh (encrypt the session) someone can get access to the user account and password in the clear when you log in. You might as well give them your parents computer at that point.

ARD is well worth the money because it is so easy to use, and secure out of the box. If you use something else, make real sure you know what you are doing and who to do it securely. You should not open up any tunnel and pass user credentials without it being secure, and even that is not 100% safe since the encryption can be broken.

 

[candyman]

I am using SpyMe by ReadPixel. It works great. I use DynDNS.org so I can access my home machine and laptop no matter what my IP address is. (I use DNSUpdate to keep DynDNS.org informed.)

ScreenCastsOnline has an excellent, free vid cast that tells you about the software and how to set it up.

Another nice feature of SpyMe is the "Support Center". It allows my laptop to act as the support center and then, when my parents need help with their computer, they send me their help request and I just click a button and remote into them. I set up the support center settings to use my DynDNS URL and that way there is no need to know my IP address in advance.

Lastly, it can run as a daemon on the host (remote) machine, so you don't have to have the application running all the time. This is great for a headless G4 that I have

Good Luck.

Thanks, I may look into this one if I find the LogMeIn is not cutting it. Anyone ever here of YuuGuu? It looks like another promising option....