Anyway, I digress. Today I’ll be filling you in on, you guessed it (or read it in the title, durrrr), a sweet online service which will allow you to remote-desktop any computer you fancy installing it on. It’s called LogMeIn. Kinda catchy, I guess. That’s beside the point. I guess I am easily distracted, huh?

So I’m guessing that since you’ve made it this far (ie. you are reading this on a tech blog) then there is a reasonable possibility that you’ve dabbled with remote-desktop software before. It essentially tends to do what it says on the tin; it allows you to view and interact with your desktop remotely, away from your machine. You may have played with the standard Windows-integrated RDP software, which provides pretty decent access to a good range of features and protocols (I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty). You might even have been adventurous enough to have a go at using a bit of VNC-based software and got it running so that you could access your machine over the web. The main problem there, though, is that you need to memorise or write down your IP address(es) to be able to connect remotely, in most cases. LogMeIn is a pretty nifty bit of software (or a software suite, actually) which allows you to access multiple remote computers in as many locations as you like, with a handy online interface that allows you to choose which machine(s) to connect to, all within your browser.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I sound like I’m shamelessly selling this to you – I do have a habit of coming off like that when I find something new that I think is cool, and tend to want to show it to people and have them go check it out! The way it works is that you register for an account at LogMeIn.com, and choose which packages you’d like – more on that in a bit, but the main thing is that there is a free option, which is what I’ll be talking about. Then, you’ll need to download and install a bit of proprietary software on whichever machines you want – PCs or Macs, with Linux support ‘on the way, sometime in the near future’ as I’m told – suitably vague, but hey, what can we expect these days? Anyway, installation of that little bit of software couldn’t be easier – takes around 2 minutes to get up and running. The idea is that it will always be running in the background, so you can connect at any point. Don’t worry about it using up system resources, though – it’s very lightweight. It’s pretty customisable, too – you can do things like block individual IPs (or IP ranges), change log-on permissions so that someone has to confirm permission at the remotely controlled computer before it can be manipulated, set up auto-recording of remote desktop sessions so you can check to see if someone’s been doing something naughty with your computer via remote desktop (shame on you for giving them permission to control it in the first place!) and so on. It’s all very terribly thrilling, don’t you know. So as I said, you’ll need to install on each machine you’d like to control, and you can set up their names etc either within the desktop application or via the web. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be getting your friends/relatives which regularly call you for IT support to install this for simplicity’s sake – saves you having to actually go round to their place to fix that bloody recurring ‘slow computer’ problem!

As I mentioned, there are actually quite a few different available bits of LogMeIn software – LogMeIn Free will be suitable for almost everyone, with a really great feature set, but there are also options available for commercial use (or those of you hardcore enough to be happy stumping up ~$70 per computer per year). The free version is built upon LogMeIn Pro2, which is the same in every way other than it also provides remote printing support and file transfers to/from the remote device over the web, remote sound, and the ability to run as a system service – and as such, reboot and auto-reconnect. None of which are even close to essential. You can check out their entire product list here, if you are so-inclined – but I recommend you stick with the free version unless you’re thinking about a commercial/professional application. Do remember to select/change to the free version once you’ve installed the desktop software, though – if you weren’t paying attention it’ll have signed you up to a 1 month trial of Pro2 automatically. Not a big deal, just could be a pain at the end of the month if you hadn’t noticed yet, and you get seemingly cut off from the remote goodness!

Now, as you can tell, I really do love the features I’ve mentioned; nice unified and simple web interface, great feature set, lightweight, incredibly easy to use and install. But here’s the real cherry on top for me: iPhone & iPad app. That’s right. You can now remote desktop any machine you’d like from anywhere with cell data coverage – 3G works beautifully but it’s still pretty damn nifty on a regular GPRS connection! Oh, and WiFi is ideal, as expected. The app itself is beautifully implemented, too – I’ve been seriously sceptical about the possibility of a well-implemented remote desktop app for the iPhone; it just seems so counter-intuitive given that the only source of input is touch. But they’ve genuinely hit the nail on the head with their iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app LogMeIn Ignition. The input mechanism is pretty simple and surprisingly intuitive; pinch to zoom in and out,  you can choose whether you’d like moving your finger to pan the screen around with the cursor staying in the centre of the iPhone/iPad screen or if youd like the cursor to move with your finger (screen panning is the easier option on the iPhone in my opinion, and is the default), single taps are single clicks, double taps are double clicks, two-finger taps are right-clicks, double tap and slide to drag items, two finger scroll to simulate mouse scroll wheel (or a MacBook touchpad’s scroll), shake the device to switch between multiple monitors. Something else I’ve noticed, incidentally, is that when you remote desktop a device the software changes the environment to suit – for instance, if you control a Windows 7 machine, it will automatically turn off font smoothing and Aero effects, and turn them all back on again once you’re done. Neat. Anyway, iPhone/iPad (same app, btw, just download it once!) app performance this good unfortunately doesn’t come free. The app is £17.99 (or $29.99), and there is no free trial – so it is worth doing a quick YouTube search to check out some tutorial/walkthrough/overview videos to see if you’d find it worthwhile. Personally, I took the plunge almost straight away and I don’t regret it! It really is a brilliant app – and according to many (many) reviews it’s the best remote dektop app on the App Store.

So there you have it folks, I hope you’ve enjoyed my brief overview of LogMeIn – and I hope you’re now off to try it out for yourself! Do you have any thoughts on LogMeIn in particular, the iPhone/iPad app or it’s competitors, or just remote desktop experiences in general? Let us know in the comments below.