Beam Me Up Scotty!

Are you driving hours to complete scheduled computer maintenance and wish you could be beamed there instead, like in Star Trek? The solution of remote access is no transporter, but will help you get the job done without leaving your desk.

Having remote access will enable you to manage computers over a large geographic area and is ideal for library systems with limited IT staff who spend hours on the road. There are several ways to access computers remotely, and some solutions are completely free.

I interviewed Lori Krasienko from Waco TECH (Technology Expanding Community Horizons) in Waco, Texas and this is what she had to say about remote access:

"My IT guy found a free program called VNC Viewer. You type in the I.P. address of the computer that you want to work with, and VNC Viewer allows you to log onto password-protected computers. Even though we don’t have a server, we have one main administrative computer and Deep Freeze allows us to control each of those computers from it. So he can log into the administrative computer from his house or wherever he is with those I.P. addresses."

The process allows them to complete time-consuming tasks such as "thawing" (disabling Deep Freeze), and performing updates at night when no one is using the computers.

Remote access isn’t the answer for everything. It won’t allow you to swap out a broken floppy drive or troubleshoot a computer with the blue screen of death. Matt Beckstrom from Lewis & Clark Library in Helena, Montana uses remote access to solve problems such as when library staff can't open up Microsoft Word. He can connect remotely to a machine and administer it from his own computer. However, not all problems can be solved remotely. Matt shared, "the hard part is when there are hardware issues--like the sound card, for example."

There’s a lively discussion on TechSoup about remote access which lists several options available. Click here to read more.

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