XP Professional has remote desktop. XP Home does not. Vista Business and Ultimate have Remote Desktop, but the various home and media center editions do not (although that missingremote web site linked above claims to have a hack for home premium!)
For systems without Remote Desktop support, I highly recommend UltraVNC (or one of the several other VNC distributions) at ultravnc.com. This is an open source freeware remoting tool that is also cross-platform. Recent versions have pretty good performance.
Even on my XP Pro systems, I sometimes use UltraVNC instead of Remote Desktop because:
1. VNC does not blank out the console screen like Remote Desktop does. This makes it appropriate for remote controlling an HTPC box.
- This is especially helpful for providing another user assistance remotely. I find it much easier to use than Windows Remote Assistance, for example.
2. VNC has no problem working with DirectX applications (such as MediaCenter 12's Theater mode). Generally, such apps will refuse to run under Remote Desktop (although I know of one major DirectX app that switches to a software renderer so it will work under Remote Desktop - but most don't do this).
Other remote solutions include pcAnywhere, radmin (both of which I have used in the past but which are no better than the free VNC), gotomypc, laplink gold, and probably a few others I've not used.
For me, I encounter no situations that are not aptly handled by either Remote Desktop or VNC.
For Linux users, I highly recommend NoMachine's NX Server (also freeware). Performance is much better than VNC and it has better clipboard support. It beats using a local X server because it allows you to suspend a session from one remote machine and resume it on another ala Windows Remote Desktop.
I consider remote controling a fundamentally important capability of any computing platform!
Soundman.
