Controlling another computer

This must sound familliar to the most of you. Being one of the few nerds in my family, I'm often asked to help out. The Netherlands aren't quite that big, but travelling around the country is a pain anyways (even more so if you don't own a car, and have to travel by public transportation, but that's another story). To reduce the traveling, I set up VNC at computers which I'm asked to look at most. Two questions:

What's the security-risk of using VNC in the first place? I know it has some password-protection, but how good is this? I never leave VNC listening when I'm not using it - I always call people telling them to 'click on that icon I installed at your computer' when I want to access it, but still. Even with passwords enabled, how high is the risk of someone else getting in?

Second, and more important: The new breed of computers come with Windows XP, and for some reason, I can't seem to connect with VNC to that. I'm not using XP myself, and haven't looked into it - but does anyone know of a good, comparable software suite? I'm tired of travelling :)

For access to m$ systems you might consider using pcAnywhere from Symantec. If security is an issue, I would only have the host pogram running when the host's owner is expecting you to connect (don't run it as a service).

cheers,
-D

For access to m$ systems you might consider using pcAnywhere from Symantec. If security is an issue, I would only have the host pogram running when the host's owner is expecting you to connect (don't run it as a service).

cheers,
-D

the double post above was a mistake (must have hit submit twice sorry)

Thanks. Twice. :)

Does pcanywhere work with XP? Anyone any experiences with it?

Hope this helps.


http://www.symantec.com/pcanywhere/Consumer/

You don't need to install any additional software - XP comes with a built in remote control facility - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...op/default.asp

Not much use if its a network problem though ;-)

VNC is better than PCAnywhere, for a start it can be connected to from Linux as well as Windows, its free... I'm sure there are other advantages, but thats all I can think of at the moment.