Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
August 27, 2006

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Volume 2, Number 11 — Sunday, August 27, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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3.  GoToMyPC Review, New on Terry's Computer Tips

This week, I finished a review of the GoToMyPC service and included it as part of a Special Edition newsletter to subscribers. Shortly thereafter, I posted it to the site, also, so everyone else could see it.

Normally, email newsletter articles aren't posted to the web site for at least 2 or 3 months. But, in this case, I was excited about the 30-day free trial that I was using, and I wanted to share the information.

GoToMyPC is a service that allows a subscriber to access their computer from another computer, across the Internet. As such, it's a great tool for a person needing to access a file on their office PC from home, or their home PC from the office. It is also great for a person who is travelling, but has access to a computer at their destination.

Any Java-capable web browser can be used to access the specially-prepared host computer. All you do at the host is sign up for the service, install Java (free from Sun Microsystems, www.java.com), and install the GoToMyPC program.

From that point, GoToMyPC sits quietly in the background all the time, and becomes available to you across the Internet. Access is protected by two passwords that you set and the transmissions from computer to computer are encrypted.

Read more in my GoToMyPC review.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial of GoToMyPC

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4.  Comments about GoToMyPC

Ira Jacobson wrote:

Have you tried any freeware that does the same thing?

I wish... Do you know of any?

The key is that this is a service that not only makes it work, and work securely, but makes it easy.

I mentioned RealVNC, but it's not in the same league. The number 1 problem with the free version is lack of encryption and a license that prohibits its use for business functions. Then, there is the connection issue (read the comments in the Paid RealVNC paragraph below).

Although there is a paid version of RealVNC that includes encryption, it comes as Client and Server versions and you install one on one computer and the other on the other computer. Then, you figure out how to find the host (Server) from the computer you're using (Client). If you've got DHCP-assigned IP addresses and/or a router on your network, it gets real complicated quickly.

PCAnywhere is another remote access system, but is similar in concept to the RealVNC paid version.

James Murata wrote about his experiences about 5 years ago:

your experience was not like mine....about five years ago I tried to usit but found it to be very slow.....I then tried it on a ship at sea and the situation was worse.....I wish there could be an appropriate speed graph somewhere on its site so a former user could want to try it again....I was a paid subscriber at that time....thanks...Jim Murata

With the 30-day free trial, you can try it risk free.

Although technology has improved greatly, there is a lot of data to move, so anything resembling dialup speeds is going to be non-workable.

One "cheat" that I discovered seems to be to reduce the resolution on the client computer, especially if you have a high resolution on the host. GoToMyPC will automatically scale the display (of the host0 to fit the screen of the client. I found that this was far better for performance than the "scroll bars" that RealVNC uses in similar circumstances.

Also, you can speed up dramatically (as I mentioned in the review) by changing the connection settings to 256-color instead of the default full-color.

That will make many tasks more functional, but nothing will help if you've got slow access speeds on either end of the connection.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 11 — Sunday, August 27, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.