View Full Version : Accessing Work PC from Home
I dont know if this is possible but my wife works for a local building firm,who run Sage accounting and payroll on a stand alone PC.
She is thinking of buying a laptop which will allow her to do a lot of Word/Excel work at home.
But she wants to know will it be possible to access/update her accounting/payroll systems from the laptop across the internet via some sort of proxy software?
If it is possible can you let me know what software she will need and also whether or not if there is a minimum spec for the new laptop.
All responses welcomed.
zantarous
15-06-2005, 09:43
You could use the remote desktop function that is built into XP (I think you both need to run the same version ie Home or Pro but don’t quote me on that). But it will all depend on the network setup of company that your wife works for; using remote desktop should be as easy as knowing the IP address of the machine she wants to connect to but her work could have remote access disabled or a secure network that you need dial in rights to access from outside the network
hookbeak
15-06-2005, 10:31
I use logmein (www.logmein.com) very good, free, faster than remote desktop and can get through our work firewall.
You need to install a small client on all machines that you wish to connect to.
Thx for the replies.
Does that mean that she will be able to use and update the data on her work PC (Sage accounting).
At the moment at home we're on dial up. Will this mean that the service will be very slow?
What about security issues? Will she have any problems or are there certain do's & donts?
Thanks.
snow-munki
15-06-2005, 11:24
i think she'll need to talk to her IT ppl really.
I know where I work, we have setup access rights for ppl to log into our VPN.
superpacman1972
15-06-2005, 11:28
I use logmein (www.logmein.com) very good, free, faster than remote desktop and can get through our work firewall.
You need to install a small client on all machines that you wish to connect to.
Another thumbs up for logmein.com. Works a treat from any PC I tried it from, although for some reason, the Java version only seems to do the HTTP tunneling stuff at work, Active X won't. :thinking:
the remote desktop solutions which have been sugested above would totally unuseable on dial up. You would really need BB for that.
I presume the files she needs access to are on her work machine rather than on a work's networked drive. Another solution would be to set up a SSH server on her computer at work.
A great peice of software is winsshd (http://www.bitvise.com/winsshd.html) this will set up a secure encypted connection between the computers. It uses ssh so port 22 would need to be open on the work's firewall, which it probably is if any linux servers are used.
Any ssh client would then be able to connect to the computer and copy files between the two. Tunnelier is made by the same people as winsshd and has a nice easy interface and can also remote desktop at the touch of a button. See these screenshots (http://www.bitvise.com/tunnelier-sftp.jpg)
winscp (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php) is also pretty good, allthough would only sychnonise or copy between folders and not remote dektop.
Thx for the replies.
Theres only one PC in the office & its hers. Might give logmein a go and see how slow it is on dial up.
If it is unbearably slow with dial up , what will the minimum broadband requirements be (and presumably cheapest)
hookbeak
15-06-2005, 15:40
i'd say you need 512mb adsl for logmein to be useable - does her office have adsl too ? Don't forget you need the connection at both ends....
Is it just a case of her needing to download and upload/sychronise files in a folder?
I take it she has the required software on her laptop.
If this is the case I would honestly go the winsshd route, it's cheaper than logmein and you wouldn't need to get BB at home. If you need to do much more than sychronise folders or copy files between the two then logmein might be better. Both have a free trial anyway so no worries
:p i'd say you need 512mb adsl for logmein to be useable - does her office have adsl too ? Don't forget you need the connection at both ends....
Balls. :p
I've a pokey half broadband connection and it's fine.....
Another fan :thumbs:
Just to clarify, do I need broadband at both ends? What happens if its only at one end?
She will be using and updating her accounting & payrol applications, the fact that they have intensive GUI, does this mean that normal dial up would be unacceptable.
zantarous
16-06-2005, 08:29
:p
Balls. :p
I've a pokey half broadband connection and it's fine.....
Another fan :thumbs:
It maybe fine for you but you have no idea what kind of data the OP will be accessing we use 512k connections for all our homewokers to access our VPN and that is just about acceptable anything below and they would struggle to send or receive large files.
I can honestly say I can do what I want using LogMeIn - I'm a web developer using psds etc....
No problems here.
nigel_williams
16-06-2005, 09:45
I tried logmein last night and it didn't display anything when I ran MediaPortal, the window was just a frame. So I went back to mywebexpc which worked fine, but a bit slow.
The Logmein application also fails to connect at the office, so I can never see my work PC. We have a corporate firewall, but there's nowehere to set it in logmein.
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