Connect remotely to help 86-year-old mom with her PC
Q: I am the IT person for my 86-year-old Mom, and she’s awesome. Through the years I’ve furnished her different PC hardware and software from Windows 95 through Windows 7 Home. Right now she’s using a basic Dell desktop i5 processor with a huge amount of power. She could blow the seniors living place away with her wireless and wired connection speeds. I love it. Anyway, I live 1,000 miles away and would like to be able to connect remotely whenever there’s an issue instead of waiting a month when I go up to visit. Do you have any recommendations for remote access?
A: I’ve been doing computer support for a long time. In the days before high-speed Internet access, the only way to offer support was to either be with the computer or computer user that needed help or to be on the phone and hope you could walk the computer user through various troubleshooting and repair options.
As being with the computer is not always possible, the second option was often the only option, and it could be quite frustrating and even futile.
Today, with widespread access to high-speed Internet, there’s a third option, which is the ability to remote control a computer. This means that as long as the ailing computer has Internet access, someone else can easily and effectively connect to that computer and have the ability to sort out any problems.
There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but the easiest tends to be with services that offer this functionality.
Paid services include companies like logmein. com or gotmypc.com. The one I use in my work is Citrix’s GoToAssist, which works very well but may be overkill for your needs.
If you are looking for a free solution, I have had very good luck with Team viewer from www. teamviewer.com. And by free, I mean it is free for non-commercial user, which I think you would qualify for, seeing as how you would be using it to support your dear old mother.
While I am on the subject, you should never allow someone to connect to your PC unless you know who they are and know you can trust them. There are a number of scams that involve someone calling your home and informing you that your computer is having issues and then offering to connect to your computer and “fix” them.
If you receive one of these calls, just hang up.
Lee co-hosts “Technology Bytes,” 8 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays, on KPFT 90.1 FM and at geekradio.com. helpline@ chron.com blog.chron.com/ helpline