Tales from the Techside

A running theme in my writing is trying to identify high quality free or low cost tools that you as real estate professionals can use. In this post I am going to examine some remote access software that can be used to access your files and computer when you are away from the office. There are a lot of great tools out there but I wanted to identify three free ones you may not have heard of before.

I have been a user of LogMeIn for about 4 years now. They have a free version which will meet most people’s needs 90% of the time. If however you find that you need to do file transfers or remote printing you might want to check out the pro version but at $9 a month it is not going to break the bank. One of the main reasons I recommend LogMeIn is that it works with all my systems. I use Linux at work and Windows/BSD mixed network at home. Using LogMeIn I can easily access my files at home using my linux system, to be clear I can’t use LogMeIn to access my linux machine from my Windows machine (for that I use VNC which I cover later in this post).

The killer feature for LogMeIn has to be that it allows for access to your computers from a Windows Mobile based device. I tried this on my Treo and it works extremely well over EVDO. There’s a bit of a lag in drawing the screen, but it’s more than usable.

This has come in extremely handy when I needed to access a file from my home network and had no easy access to a computer. It was also very useful in narrowing down an issue we were having with our exchange server while I was away at a conference.

one of the best things about NTRConnect is that it is cross platform both incoming and outgoing control for the Windows and Mac platforms. Like LogMeIn, NTRConnect has a pro version which ups the features list allowing for actions such as file transfers, remote printing, and my favorite wake on lan. Also like LogMeIn NTRConnect works from Windows Mobile enabled devices, they claim Palm support but I could not get it working. NTRConnect works great and if you have problems with LogMeIn

If you do not mind doing a little bit of configuration in terms of firewalls and setting up a Dynamic DNS service if you don’t have a static IP address then UltraVNC is by far the best of all solutions. It is completely free and has all the features of the rest and more including file transfer, mobile platform support, and even video sharing. UltraVNC also has a utility called SingleClick which will allow you take over a relative or friend’s computer easily should they need technical support.

If you are already using GotoMyPC or another pay for access platform then I would encourage you to give LogMeIn or NTRConnect a shot. Both have nearly the exact same features as GotoMyPC and the pro version of each is almost half the cost of GotoMyPC.

Are you using an alternate low cost or free remote access system that I have not covered above? If you are using LogMeIn or NTRConnect how are they working for you?

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