Open mindedness is easy; not only can I offer it as a free service, often times it actually results in a profit to me.

Once again this is a prime example.

Whilst I want to offer clients a quality resource I also want to be able to assist family and friends at a minimal cost. Anyone with any ability in a given field knows that family and friends will always hit you up for a good rate when they need help. IT is definitely one of those fields.

The product you have suggested allows me to assist friends and family at no cost other than my time. I just ran a test session and successfully played a game of solitaire half a continent away. Not only that but because I was doing it for non-commercial reasons, I was able to do it without any cost other than bandwidth (which I already pay for).

The pool of available tools is definitely growing and thanks to this blog I don’t have to search, people are offering me solutions. That’s making IT easy!

May I suggest TeamViewer (www.teamviewer.com) for the remote control of other machines as well?

Easy usability, plenty of features like session recording, VPN, remote reboot, Mac OS compatibility, file transfer and many more make it to one of the most comprehensive free remote support tools.

Give it a try, I´m sure you´ll like it. If any questions remain please let me know.

Constantin

At your suggestion I have had a look at the Techinline product and performed a trial support session (thanks for your time Tom).

Techinline worked well and allowed me to take control of the remote computer just as I had expected.

The price is definitely right and they also have a casual user option of $20 ($25.42 AU at the time of writing) for 5 sessions which is an excellent option and you can use the sessions whenever you like.