Free Remote Login Tools

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Remote login tools allow you to connect to your computer remotely. You get complete control over your desktop and you can work as if you were working on your own machine. The Windows standard "Remote Desktop Connection" tool is one of the best methods to connect to your computer remotely. But its difficult to use when your computer does not has a static IP address, is connected over a LAN or with a DSL modem which uses NAT.

Here are some tools which I've used for remotely connecting to my computer and should be helpful for others:

Live Mesh:
Live Mesh is one of the best free tools, I've come across. It has great remote desktop capabilities with features similar to the Remote Desktop connection. You would need the Mesh software to be installed on both machine and logged in with a live id. Live Mesh has many more capabilities apart from remote connection. It has a fabulous file synchronization service with 5GB of free storage space. I have been using it for the past 6 months and it has been really superb. Highly recommended if you work at multiple locations. (Also see an earlier post: Mesh up your Data on Live Mesh.)

TeamViewer:
TeamViewer is a simple tool which allows you to remotely connect to a computer and requires a combination of auto-generated id and passcode. You don't even need to install the tool, you can just run the program by selecting the appropriate option in the setup exe. Anyone having access to the id and passcode can run team viewer and remotely access the computer. This tool is good if you need a temporary access to a computer. I prefer this tool for troubleshooting someone's computer. It gives you the complete desktop access of the machine by sending snapshots of the workspace. It supports Windows and Mac.

These free tools are great alternatives to the paid remote desktop softwares such as GoToMyPC and other VPN based tools. There are many more free tools available, feel free to post a comment about them.