Remote Desktop

I first saw Remote Desktop in action when I visited the Microsoft office in Bangalore earlier this year. Suffice to say, that's one demo they really wowed me with. Now I have something like that running on the network I set up yesterday, and it's still really cool :-D. Microsoft bundles a "lite" version of Remote Desktop with XP, and it's amazing to experience.

I have two computers on a network, Ione and Seven. Ione (the old P-3) is my server, and Seven (the new P-4) is my work machine. Ione runs Windows Server 2003, whereas Seven runs XP.

Setting up Remote Desktop was easy, though I had to re-enable a few services that I had disabled to get it working (in Start->Run->service.msc, the Terminal Services and Server processes must be enabled). I also had to enable Remote Desktop in the System Control Panel applet as it is disabled by default in Windows XP. On 2003, it works out of the box. The Remote Desktop application is located in Start->Programs->Accessories->Communication and when launched provides a very simple UI to connect to computers. The browse function which supposedly finds computers on the network that can be connected to didn't work for me. However, directly connecting to it by typing its host name in did, and from then on, it was tweaking its settings to achieve optimal performance. On my wireless link, it is almost like being on the other machine. I experience a certain jerkiness on the screen when I drag windows on the remote desktop, but otherwise, it's very responsive.

The only problem that I currently have is that the "lite" version of Remote Desktop that is bundled with XP doesn't allow two simultaneous users to connect. That is, if my brother is using the computer, when I remotely connect to it, he'll get kicked out. While in some cases this is preferable [;-)] this is not a good solution most often. I'm looking into a hack for this.

I've also attached a screenshot of me using it from Ione to control my downloads on Seven... I'm downloading Openoffice using Flashget in the other computer :-)