... and others have said TeamViewer can do the always-on scenario too. I didn't know. I never used that feature.

Of course... That falls under the tech support scenario? From what I understood, the AC was complaining about it not being always-on. If you follow the thread, I never said I didn't understand the tech-support scenario. Hell, I admitted I have my own infrastructure to do such things.

Ok, I see.

My wife learned quickly it was wiser to listen to me regarding technology. Different temperaments. We can't fix our wives, eh?

If you have a server ssh-accessible, you don't need any of that.

ssh -L 3389:wifes-computer:3389 myserver.no-ip.com

Now you have a tunnel going from localhost:3389 to the wifes-computer, going over myserver.no-ip.com. This means you point your RDP client to localhost and you magically connect.

Clients like Reminna can do this all from the interface.

Nothing is exposed, except for the server and only the ssh daemon. Everything is nicely encrypted. My example was for RDP, but you can do VNC too by using 5900 instead.

I have a hard time understanding why you would want to access a desktop machine at home. Isn't that by definition a security nightmare, especially with less clued-in users? However, if that's your thing, why not shell out for the Pro version of everyone favourite Windows version? Comes with RDP.

It's not for tech support? A cursory glance at their website told me that. Instead of calling me a fuckwit, what about just telling me why I'm wrong? That would actually be useful, for those like me who thought it's used for remote tech support.

Ok, fair point. That's where you step in and make sure she buys superior products instead. That way you're not tech support for people any more.

No, but we're on slashdot. Where a nerd is still allowed to be a nerd. You can bet your ass that I'm not the only one doing exactly this.

Of course. For me it works. If you read further on, I mentioned the non-IT option.

Let's face it, a big portion of pc users are gamers which are very important for the pc industry

Really? For every hardware-junkie-gamer, there are at least 10 office drones working on Core2Duo class machines with 4GB RAM and Intel graphics. Let me guess: you're a gamer and see the world from that perspective?

I'm not a gamer, I work in corporate IT. I need to keep the drones happy.

Personally, I just set up two DNS servers, and my own dyndns service (inspired on freedns.afraid.org) and I make sure the people I support have the necessary port forwards for ssh using keys. From there on, it's just an ssh tunnel away for RDP or VNC.

Now, for a nice all-in-one-package, where you don't need to do anything yourself and don't need to prepare the target PC's, I'd say TeamViewer works perfectly fine.

1) Okay, just a question about your wife having to cope with crapware and you posting on slashdot: Is there any reason why you didn't say "Honey, gimme a day, I'll fix that for you" and install from scratch without all the crapware? Me? I got wife the highest end iMac I could get back in the day. Best decision ever..

2) Possible, but from back in the Vista days, they preferred to say nothing and get the sales.

3) Yes

4) Yes

I gather that more serious OpenBSD admins simply boot from network and be done with it. (Google PXE, if you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about) I haven't used a USB or CD-Rom for ages to install mainstream Linuxes or OpenBSD.

As someone working in the business: no, video on demand isn't all that big. (Big enough, for it not to be ignored, but not exactly all that interesting) What seems to work best is live shows. People (well, mostly men) are willing to pay for that.

First-Ever Google Glass Porn . (Yes, obviously it's not "real", but funny nevertheless)