Mac to Mac remote desktop

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

Brian

 

leopard will have built in fuctionality for this i believe

 

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 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.

 

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.

 

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.