There has to be one or two moments in your computing life where you wish you had access to your home Mac when you're somewhere else. Apple has a solution for that called Remote Desktop - an application that allows you to access your files and pretty much everything else at home from a remote PC.

To have that luxury, however, you need to shell out at least US$ 300. That easily polarizes the users into those who can and cannot afford the handy little program. Fortunately, VNC has presented us a free alternative so that even casual users can enjoy the feature.

When VNC is installed into the remote and home computers, it allows you to easily get in the desktop of one or more computers if you have a LAN at home. Just remember to leave the Mac running and connected to the internet when you're not home and you can access it anywhere you want.

Users with home LANs who plan to use VNC often are encouraged to have their own domain names to avoid having to remember long IP addresses. These may also be written down, but is not advised for security reasons.