Remote Desktop into a PC on a seperate network

[deafritz]

So, i'm not even sure if this is even possible with Macs, but it's worth a shot.

My Girlfriend uses a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.5. She has to use Visual Basic for one of her classes. Needless to say, not gonna happen. I have a PC running Windows XP Pro at my parents house that she could use to do this. It would migrate here for her use, but my brother needs it.

I was wondering if there is a way to remote into a windows based computer over the internet from a mac. I know i can do it between two windows computers. And my PC at home is set up to accept remote access and she has administrative access on both her laptop here and my desktop at my parents.

I have windows remote desktop client downloaded onto the laptop, and (if there was another computer on this network) i have no doubts that i could connect to another computer on this network....

so i talk alot. Long story short, i need to connect to a pc from a mac over the internet... Go go gadget apple geeks

This is what i get for being Microsoft Certified

Thanks for your help

David

 

[TheDoc]

Most certainly can! I use Microsoft Office's 'Remote Desktop' application to connect to my machine at the office when I'm at home. Though I also need to use LogMeIn Hamachi due to make things work that I'd need to get our programmer to explain - far too confusing for me!

But it's certainly doable.

 

[pdjudd]

GoToMyPc has a paid option and is cross platform. You can also look into LogMeIn which has a free edition that lets you log into Macs.

GoToMyPC is made my Citrix, the king of remote access software and will defiantly work.

There is a free trial you can get.

 

[gglockner]

There are a few options, but they basically come down to two flavors: VNC and RDP. VNC is more universal and is found in more products, but RDP gives much better performance, especially over the internet.

Since you have WinXP Pro, it supports Windows RDP. (WinXP Home does not without serious hacking and likely violation of the Windows licensing agreement). As mentioned earlier in the thread, you can obtain the free Remote Desktop Connection for the Mac, then connect remotely to the WinXP machine. Note that you may have to setup the router to forward port 3389 to the WinXP machine. Security settings in Remote Desktop Connection sometimes can be frustrating, but once you get it setup, the performance is great because it uses vector graphics.

VNC is easier to setup, but the performance leaves much to be desired. I wouldn't want to use an IDE remotely via VNC. But there are a number of free and paid VNC tools, including some that manage the networking for you.

One other option is to get a Windows license for the girlfriend then setup Windows either as dual boot or via virtualization (Parallels, VMWare, VirtualBox). More memory is required with virtualization, but it's the most flexible option.

 

[AGVirt]

You can try Ericom Blaze, a software-based RDP acceleration and compression product that accelerates RDP performance by up to 25 times and delivers higher frame rates and reduces screen freezes and choppiness.

Ericom Blaze works with any standard RDP host, including VDI, Terminal Servers and remote physical machines.

You can read more about Blaze and download a free evaluation at: http://www.ericom.com/Blaze

You can also check out a demo of someone using Blaze to connect from a Mac to a Windows PC:
http://ericomguy.blogspot.com/Blaze4Mac

 

[codymac]

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client

 

[ActionableMango]

My Girlfriend uses a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.5. She has to use Visual Basic for one of her classes. Needless to say, not gonna happen.

Remote Desktop is not the route I would take.

This problem is best solved with a VM such as Parallels or VMWare Fusion that lets you run Windows applications on the OS X desktop. Alternatively you could use dual boot with boot camp to run Windows natively on the MBP.

Having the software running locally is vastly superior to using the Internet and requiring that some remote computer be on all the time when you need it.