I got roped into being the tech support for my grandfather, which is fine. He just does basic stuff on the computer and should be fairly easy to help him out. The only problem is I live like an hour and a half away from him. I have his computer here with me to clean it out and reload software, etc.
Can I set it up so I can log in to his computer from my house and help him out (like what dell tech support does)? Is that VPN? I'm not totally sure how to set it up... he's on comcast, so I doubt he has a static ip address. Any help?
The remote assistance feature in XP + works like that.
doesnt need a static IP
https://secure.logmein.com/US/home.aspx
Crossloop (http://www.crossloop.com) works well too. I use it all the time and its free.
A couple of products I use for business use it too to take care of difficult tech support calls. I set up Skype for my father in-law`s computer when he was at his house in Croatia with it.
Quote from: ducpainter on December 03, 2009, 01:56:33 PM
https://secure.logmein.com/US/home.aspx
+1
This will let you connect into his computer, as long as he is connected to the internet, and you are on any computer with a web browser on the internet. You can connect into his Windows machine from a mac, or vice versa. He will end up with a little app running in the background, but you don't need any special software on the computer you'd use to connect in... just a web browser. It's good stuff.
Incidentally, I've found that it works nicely in conjunction with Dropbox, since I can transfer files from one computer to another using both free services, basically by dragging a file into a folder, and finding it in a folder on the other computer... I started a different thread on this so look for it if you might have use :)