Wanna' Big Mac?? by Gary Woods

If you want to connect remotely from a Windows XP machine to another Windows XP Machine there are a lot of programs that will do that. But if you want to connect remotely from Windows XP to a Mac it's a little dicier. There are products that will make this connection, but being the naturally thrifty lad I am I went for my favorite word in the English language "FREE."

A product called VNC (Virtual Network Computing) originally developed by AT&T has been around since about 1998. VNC enables remote access to graphical desktops via TCP/IP, the stand Internet protocol.

The company that distributes VNC is called RealVNC (http://www.realvnc.com) and they offer 3 versions of the software which are Free, Personal and Enterprise editions. The Personal and Enterprise versions provide additional features such as security and scaling.

Though the free VNC software provides basic authentication, you can encrypt your communications using a program such SSH, which reroutes the interaction between client and server

VNC consists of two components, the server and the viewer. You install the server on the machine that you want to access remotely and the viewer on the machine that will do the accessing.

You can get the free Windows Viewer from RealVNC and if you're installing the server on a Mac you can download OSXvnc from http://sourceforge.net/projects/osxvnc.

I recommend just using the default settings to get your system hooked up and before you know it your PC and Mac will be meeting.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910