| The two most common scenarios for using these remote access features are (a) dialing your home PC using a laptop and (b) dialing into your office network from your PC at home. To help you keep the roles of these various computers straight, the computer industry has done you the favor of introducing specialized terminology ”and learning these terms now will help keep your brain from tying itself in knots: -
The host computer is the home-base computer ”the one that's sitting there, waiting for you to connect to it. It could be your office computer (you'll dial into it from home), or your home computer (you'll dial into it from your laptop on the road). -
The remote computer is the one that will do the dialing: your laptop on the road, for example, or your home machine when you tap into the office network. The remaining pages of this chapter cover all three systems, but here's a quick summary: -
Dialing direct . The remote computer can dial the host PC directly, modem to modem, becoming part of the network at the host location. At that point, you can access shared folders exactly as described in the previous chapter. The downside: The host PC must have its own phone line that only it answers. Otherwise, its modem will answer every incoming phone call, occasionally blasting the ears of hapless human callers . -
Virtual private networking . Using this system, you don't have to make a direct phone call from the remote PC to the host. Instead, you use the Internet as an intermediary. This way, you avoid long distance charges, and the host PC doesn't have to have its own phone line. Once again, the remote computer behaves exactly as though it has joined the network of the system you're dialing into. -
Remote Desktop . This feature, new in Windows XP, doesn't just make the remote PC join the network of the host; it actually turns the remote computer into the host PC, filling your screen with its screen image. When you touch the trackpad on your laptop, you're actually moving the cursor on the home-base PC's screen, and so forth. UP TO SPEED
Remote Networking vs. Remote Control As noted above, when you connect to a PC using direct-dial or virtual private networking (VPN), you're simply joining the host's network from far away. If you've dialed into your home PC using your laptop, and you try to open a Word document that's actually sitting on the home PC, your laptop's copy of Word opens and loads the file. Your laptop is doing the actual word processing; the host just sends and receives files as needed. Windows XP's new Remote Desktop feature is a completely different animal. In this case, you're using your laptop to control the host computer. If you double-click that Word file on the home-base PC, you open the copy of Word on the host computer. All of the word processing takes place on the distant machine, the one you've connected to; all that passes over the connection between the two computers is a series of keystrokes, mouse movements, and screen displays. The host is doing all the work. Your laptop is just peeking at the results. Once you understand the differences between these technologies, you can make a more informed decision about which to use when. For example, suppose your PC at the office stores a gigantic 100-megabyte video file, and you want to edit it from your PC at home. Using a remote networking connection means that you'll have to wait for the file to be transmitted to your home machine before you can begin working. If you've connected to the office machine using a standard dial-up modem, you'll be waiting, literally, for several days. If you use a Remote Desktop connection, on the other hand, the video file remains right where it is: on the host computer, which does all the processing. You see on your screen exactly what you would see if you were sitting at the office. On the other hand, if the computer doing the dialing is a brand-new Pentium 7, zillion- megahertz screamer, and the host system is a five-year old rustbucket on its last legs, you might actually prefer a remote network connection, so that the faster machine can do most of the heavy work. |
To make this work, you have to dial into a computer running Windows XP Pro. But the machine doing the dialing can be running any relatively recent version of Windows, including Windows XP Home Edition. NOTE The world is filled with more powerful, more flexible products that let you accomplish the same things as these Windows XP features, from software programs like LapLink, Carbon Copy, and PC Anywhere to Web sites like http://www.gotomypc.com. On the other hand, Remote Desktop is free. Note, by the way, that these are all methods of connecting to an unattended machine. If somebody is sitting at the PC back home, you might find it far more convenient to dial in using Windows Messenger, described in Chapter 11. It's easier to set up and doesn't require XP Professional on one end, yet offers the same kind of "screen sharing" as Remote Desktop. |
