Monthly Archives: October 2007

Control your computer remotely for free, with LogMeIn

LogMeIn Logo

Have you ever been away from home and needed to access information on a remote computer? Maybe get flight info from your computer at home, or access accounting information at the office, etc.

Remote control of remote computers has been around for a while, but it has been complicated.

Luckily for us, there is a new method for remotely controlling a computer that is quick, secure, and easy to use. Its called LogMeIn and it comes in both pro and free flavors. It’s easy to get started:

  1. Go to www.LogMeIn.com and click “Download LogMeIn Free” to create an account.
  2. You will then receive an email asking you to confirm your new account, click on the link in the email to confirm.
  3. Log in to the LogMeIn website.
  4. Install their software on the computer you want to remote control.
  5. Click the link with the green plus that says “Add computer”. It will walk you through a few steps to install their software.

You are done!

LogMeIn Screenshot

Next time you want to remotely control on of your computers, just go to www.LogMeIn.com and login. You will see your computer, just click on it, authenticate, and click on the remote control link. In a few seconds you will be remotely controlling your computer!

If you need more features, such as remote printing, file transfers, etc, you can sign up for LogMeIn Pro. To see a list of features, click here.

Gmail gets IMAP support

Google is rolling out IMAP support to its gmail and google hosted users. You can activate it by going to settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Enable IMAP.

Google IMAP picture

If you don’t see the IMAP option yet, you can try to logout and then log back in to see if it appears.

For those of you who don’t know, IMAP is a protocol for fetching email from a remote server, like POP, but more advanced. The main difference is that IMAP is designed to be used from multiple computers, so email is not deleted from the mail server when it is downloaded.