Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Chrome Web Store - Chrome Remote Desktop


So I came across this remote login app today designed by Google.  You install it through a chrome browser by googling "Chrome Web Store - Chrome Remote Desktop" and installing it both on the computer you want to share and the computer you want to control from.

The setup takes 1 minute.

We have beefy computers on campus, and I learned today that I can steer them from anywhere in the world using a 2-year old netbook, a 10 year old computer, or a cell phone, for that matter.

It seems like all the computing that anyone needs any more is a decent desktop and then a chromebook/netbook to connect to it.  I can run Excel remotely seamlessly remotely.  I can stream video (i.e. youtube or whatever) remotely seamlessly.  I can crunch through terabytes of data remotely using SAS and STATA, just as if I were in front of my office machine.  It's truly an incredible experience.

Anyway, I came across that today and thought I'd pass it along.  I am kicking myself big time for not utilizing this technology earlier; it would have saved me many unnecessary trips to campus to debug a program (add a missing semi-colon) to something that is supposed to run for days on end.