I’m about to pack up and head for lunch in downtown Melbourne and then hop on a plane back home to Brisbane. I’ve had a good trip, catching up with university friends and meeting some new friends who I met through blogging – hi to Darren, Mike and Stephen and thanks for spending some time with me while I was visiting. I’ve also been to the Australian Open tennis twice and had plenty of good meals out in my favourite streets – Lygon and Brunswick.
Once again my trusty laptop has been my constant companion. I’ve spent some time at cafes and the library doing a bit of writing, but not much because I’ve been too busy doing other things and meeting people. I really want to knuckle down and pump out the blog traffic course, which is my task for the next few weeks. Although I do have two reports to come out before that as well.
Remote Access
During this trip I have been lucky enough to stay with two newly married friends who live in Port Melbourne and have wi-fi broadband so I’ve been checking emails each morning and evening. This has been a terribly slow month for BetterEdit, which is not a good thing for finances but made this trip very relaxing as I didn’t have the pressure of any jobs to process. Consequently I haven’t spent too much time on the computer but it has been comforting to know that I wouldn’t have to hunt around for net access.
This was the first time I’ve tested remote access away from Brisbane. At the moment I have my work desktop sitting in my garage at home with ADSL net access. My friend Alborz set up my router so I can use remote access to the desktop. I’ve been logging in from my laptop here in Melbourne to my desktop in Brisbane, which besides being efficient, is just cool. I’m using the built-in Windows XP remote desktop utility so all I need are my IP address for Brisbane and my usual username and password to login to Windows.
For any solo-business travellers I recommend you set up remote desktop. In the past I’ve tried combinations of webmail and setting up my laptop as my main computer but remote desktop is definitely the best solution so far. The problem with using a laptop as a work computer when you travel is you can’t always use your email clients because you can’t gain access to mail servers etc. Webmail is a terrible solution because it can be slow and if you are like me, you don’t have your local mail settings available either (such as address book, sig files, folders etc).
With remote desktop I can login even from a net cafe to my home computer and have everything exactly as if I was at home. The only problem is a little lag since my desktop has to be “downloaded”, you can be restricted by bandwidth limitations. No need to twiddle with mail servers, or hunt around for email addresses or copy and paste signatures – it’s all there exactly how it would be at home. Best of all it’s stored at one location as well so you don’t have to worry about your data archives being out of whack.
That’s it for now, next time I write I’ll be back in Brisbane.
Yaro Starak
Melbourne Lover
VNC is another great tool for remote desktop stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC
I use remote desktop everyday from work to home. Hell, I’m using it right now. I also use it heavily when I go away, especially when I’m at my parents’ house in the country.
I’m also going to be playing with VNC very shortly given my recent undertaking to change my primary machine to Linux.
Glad you enjoyed Melbourne, Yaro. I’ll send you an email, I’d love to get together with you for coffee or something just to chat before you head overseas.
S.
remote desktop …hmmm… how do you manage such things as the need to shut you desktop down during summer thunderstorms?
Generally most of us have not invested in the harware required for the level of protection needed from power surges, the big damager – brownouts, and even stuff coming down the phone line. I know in summer I often have to shut down our network often for periods of 1-5 hours due to late afternoon, early evening storms.
Other than that – sounds like a neat idea!
Yaro, it was great to meet up. You gave me some good ideas and have helped motivate me to working at this full-time.
Keep in touch.
Next time, stop off in Sydney for a while
Wouldn’t there be possible security issues by allowing access to your desktop over the net?
hey Yaro, if you only want to check your emails, why you don’t use an IMAP server?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP
“IMAP allows users to access new messages instantly on their computers, since the mail is stored on the network.”
So the only thing you will really need its your wi-fi connection, your emails will be stored online and you can check them out in your laptop (buy a MacBook Pro!) on the go!
Good to heard from you fellow, keep going!
Javier Cabrera
Yes I’m sure there are some security issues with remote access. Nothing is ever 100% safe online. I wouldn’t recommend remote desktop for anyone paranoid about that sort of thing. For myself, I’ll take the risk. I feel the same about virus protection. I’ve been online for 8 years and I feel as long as you are smart with your web habits you don’t even need virus protection or email scanning…but that’s me. Maybe I’m too trusting.
I’ve used IMAP mail before and it’s good, however nothing beats having access to your entire computer exactly how it is. All your files, settings and information available anywhere you go.
Tim, the security issues are not really worth being worried about. Anyone trying to break in needs your IP address, your username and your password. As long as you don’t use stupidly simple passwords, they’re not going to get in. It’s much more likely that someone would physically break into your house while you’re away, and steal the whole computer!
Remote Desktop is fairly secure- it uses high-grade encryption between the two computers.
We give everyone at my office access to Remote Desktop- I can’t imagine life without it.
Darren’s quite right. This is the same argument I always give people regarding using a credit card online to pay for something. You are more likely to have your wallet or card stolen in real life than have your number stolen while using it online.
This is also a test post to make sure the comments subscription is working in WordPress 2.0 (I just upgraded).
Yaro
Well, fair enough.
So I guess remote desktop access doesn’t work if your computer uses dynamic IPs?