BT broadband office

'Out of office' is no excuse

Posted 18 September 2007 at 8:25AM by Simon Dickson in Announcements, Doing business online

A couple of us were chatting the other day, and idly came up with a new theory of evolution. Specifically, the evolution of the mobile computer user.

Here's how it works. You start off with a single desktop PC. Then you realise there are things on your hard disk that you'd like to have access to elsewhere - business documents, maybe personal photos or music. So you buy yourself a USB memory stick; as we've mentioned before, they're getting outrageously cheap. But no matter how big a memory stick you buy, there'll always be something you didn't copy over.

So stage three is full remote access to your desktop machine, over the internet - with faster machines, increasing broadband take-up and better online security, it's now a much more practical solution. You install a program on your main PC, then head off on the road. When you need to access your hard disk, other resources on your company network, or maybe just get into your email without having to remember all the settings, you just login via the web.

Maybe you're on a business trip when you suddenly need access to a key document or dataset. Maybe there's a problem on the office network, and you're the only one who can fix it. Or maybe you're on holiday somewhere when there's a crisis back at base. Borrow a friend's PC, buy some time in a cybercafe, or whip out your Windows Mobile smartphone or PDA - and you're in. It's just like sitting at your office desk, but with a better view.

If this appeals, have a look at BT's new Remote Access Pack. It's £7.50 per month (ex VAT), and lets you access any Windows machine from pretty much any computer with a Java-enabled web browser. The mobile client is understandably a bit less powerful, but it works with many recent PDA or smartphone running Microsoft's Pocket PC or Windows Mobile operating systems - broadly speaking, those which use a touchscreen. The service uses the same technology as Citrix's GoToMyPC - but it's a special price for BT customers only. (Nudge, nudge...)

Oh, before we forget... step four in our theory of evolution is the full-on web 2.0 experience, where you cast off the shackles of the desktop PC, and store everything online - or 'in the cloud', as the jargon has it. Arguably we've been used to this idea for over a decade: it's the same principle as Hotmail on the web vs Outlook (Express) on your desktop. But we'll return to that another time...

Tags: bt, citrix, gotomypc, Remote Access Pack

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