I've been pretty impressed with the logmein ability to work even in very locked down environments, corporate customers, education customers, etc. Of course, one has to be ABLE to INSTALL at the admin level for the machine, but this is true of anything. Once that is done, the logmein client AND server install work very well. I did a little bit of research a few years ago on this as I was SHOCKED that it really did simply work. It appears that the protocol is nothing more than a 256K secured HTTPS protocol (very similar to what one would have doing online banking, or buying a ticket online.) So, from a protocol going out over and in through the firewall, the protocol should not be blocked. A company CAN block the secure server trigger, which has to ping logmein.com, but as someone reported up above, if you can login to the logmein website, you can most likely have the server authentication work too.

Oh.. FWIW - I only had to install an activeX control at work - nothing else. The installation happened on my home PC.

A little trick for filetransfer. I just have a dropbox folder setup on the remote system. If I need a file, I drop it in the dropbox and it syncs automatically and appears after transfer in the dropbox folder in my local machine.

Printing remotely?
 

I would like to print documents remotely. So if I'm travelling, access my W7P PC in the home office, and print documents to the network printer. Haven't yet tried remote desktop, however any other suggestions?

TIA

The paid versions of Logmein will do it.

Mmm thought as much...

Paid? FT? :)

I was wondering about putting the IP address of the printer in the DMZ of my router, somehow accessing it that way. I have a static IP address...

Will keep sniffing.

I think Teamviewer allows you to do this.

Sure, but then anyone on the internet will be able to print to your printer. Depending on vulnerabilities in your printer's internal software, they could then potentially access other devices on your network. Exposing LAN devices to the internet is generally a Bad Idea.

if you email the document to be printed as an attachment from your "home" computer to wherever you are using as the control computer, and then print it from there you can get round this limitation. you can use dropbox as already stated, or "drag and drop" the document into skype to the message box which does file transfers of everything up to very large files easily.

there are lots of ways around it. if you are working on a machine without your normal mail program, then have a webmail address (hotmail, gmail, yahoo etc) which you can open in a browser window too.

Thanks all - should be able to work something out...

Here's how to do this securely if you can't afford a firewall with VPN support (which can be as low as $200 or so used by the way) . . .

Setup a dynamic DNS program on your laptop which registers with dyndns or other service. Setup the rule on your router to allow traffic from that name (mylaptop.dyndns.org or whatever you choose) only, and forward all ports to your printer and/or computer.

While IP addresses can be spoofed, it's quite unlikely you'd have something of sufficient interest to a hacker so this is relatively secure.

Now, some routers won't let you use domain names for permissions instead of IP addresses. Find one that does :p

If you're going to go this route, get a $30 router that will run DD-WRT, which includes a built-in PPTP VPN. I think you can also probably print over an SSH tunnel too, but I've never been able to get it to work.

I've never seen a consumer router that let you set traffic rules based on domain names instead of IPs.

How do manage to have the Chrome Remote Desktop app always start when I open Chrome on the target machine? (Or better, like the Logmein client) somehow starts when Windows starts?)

Each time I want to enable my home machine to be connected to from my Chromebook, I have to go to the Chrome Remote Desktop app page and "install" it again.

I don't want to be out somewhere, needing to use it and realize that it's not currently enabled on my home/target machine.

Feel free to "Here, Let Me Google That for You" ;) because I just wasn't finding a simple answer to that question, although lots of answers to questions I wasn't sure I was asking :)

Chrome Remote Desktop starts automatically on system boot if configured for any-time remote access via the My Computers section.

http://productforums.google.com/foru...me/-TWoCH3MhPk

Chrome doesn’t need to be opened on the remote computer.

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1649523?hl=en

Thank you.

But I'm feeling dumb: the first link doesn't tell me HOW to do that, just that I can.