I'll be moving away for university in a month but will occasionally need to access my family PC at home (remotely) to transfer files to my Mac and manage those files (mainly deleting them afterwards). I've been doing some research and have found remote desktop access applications like LogMeIn and VNC freeware, and I seem to gather that VPN networks can somehow accomplish what I'm trying to do here. Problem is, the easy-to-use apps like LogMeIn are awfully expensive for what they do, and I'm looking for something free or relatively cheap that can handle my problem properly. But the freeware VNC clients are extremely confusing to me, and I'm having trouble understanding the concept of VPNs, how they work and how they can possibly solve my problem here. I've been reading for hours but my brain's too tired to keep going, so I'm turning to you guys to try and help me out here. Can you recommend any solutions to my problem that are free or inexpensive, or at least point me in the right direction with an article or something along those lines? I'd really appreciate any help I can get here, thanks.
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Trying to remotely access PC files from my Mac
- Thread starter Canuckk
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Winni
macrumors 68040
If you have a Business/Professional/Enterprise edition of Windows on your PC, just enable remote access to the computer and configure VPN access on your Internet router. Install Microsoft's free Remote Desktop Connection on your Mac and connect to your PC at home.
If you don't want to mess around with IP addresses, use DynDNS (also free for personal use) on your PC-side of things. Many (home) Internet routers come with DynDNS support built-in. If your ISP gives you a static IP address, you don't need this tool - it's for customers of ISPs that disconnect you after a couple of hours so that you get a new IP address (they do this to prevent you from setting up 'real' Internet servers that are always available under a static address).
There are a couple of other solutions, but that would be my approach.
On the other hand, why don't you just copy everything to an external hard disk and then you won't be needing crutches like that.
If you don't want to mess around with IP addresses, use DynDNS (also free for personal use) on your PC-side of things. Many (home) Internet routers come with DynDNS support built-in. If your ISP gives you a static IP address, you don't need this tool - it's for customers of ISPs that disconnect you after a couple of hours so that you get a new IP address (they do this to prevent you from setting up 'real' Internet servers that are always available under a static address).
There are a couple of other solutions, but that would be my approach.
On the other hand, why don't you just copy everything to an external hard disk and then you won't be needing crutches like that.
I can vouch for the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). Version 2 is possibly the nicest MS product I've used.
I use Microsoft's Remote Desktop quite a bit, and it does work well.
However, I have the problem that when I copy files from my Windows computer to my Mac through RDC, it renames all the files with lowercase letters. Is there any way to preserve the letter case of the files when copying?
However, I have the problem that when I copy files from my Windows computer to my Mac through RDC, it renames all the files with lowercase letters. Is there any way to preserve the letter case of the files when copying?