For example, this article is currently being written at 21:30 on Wednesday evening and since I don’t have my e-mail account or address book on this machine I will log in to the office computer when complete and send it directly from my regular company e-mail address.

In the past I have covered RealVNC which although being a fantastic little free application is somewhat rough around the edges and is relatively difficult to set up and use. This week I discovered ‘WallCooler’ which is a little more polished and simple to configure but still free of charge.

To get started, first download the 30mb application from www.vedivi.com, install it on the machine which you wish to control. You then set up a login name which will be used to locate the computer when you are connecting from the road; at this point you will of course also set up a password so that only you can gain access to the machine.

Unlike some Remote VNC applications the use of a login e-mail address to locate the computer rather than a specific IP (Internet Protocol) address means that you won’t be affected if your unique address on the Internet changes. This is extremely important as many Internet Service Providers will change your IP address every time you reconnect to the Internet.

Once this step is completed, you simply download and install the application on the second computer and enter the same login details as you set up previously and immediately you will be able to control the remote machine and transfer files between the two. Since the software automatically configures itself to work around your firewall, you shouldn’t have to perform any further set-up than the above, however there more advanced options that can be configured if necessary.

Everything that is transmitted is SSL encoded meaning that any transferred data is safe from prying eyes, however I would recommend that with any application of this nature that you do ensure that your password is secure. For example, rather than something obvious try to pick a relatively long combination of letters, symbols and numbers that couldn’t be easily guessed.

I personally don’t see how accessing a remote computer could get much easier than this and although the same company do sell a scaled up application which includes a few extra bells and whistles, the free version should be substantial enough for most users.