>I use gotomypc myself, and it works great. But can't Remote Deskop be used through firewalls using a VPN? And does that have the same weaknesses as #1?
>
>>
>>Once you have a hardware firewall in place, to implement remote control capabilities you have 2 basic options:
>>
>>1. Open port(s) in the firewall to allow incoming connections. If you're good at networking and the client software supports it you can use non-standard ports and port map within the firewall/router which will greatly slow down crackers. If you open standard ports your Remote Desktop security is no better than with no firewall at all (but the firewall prevents other attacks on other ports).
>>
>>2. If you don't want to open firewall ports or bother with advanced router/firewall configuration you can use a proxy service such as GoToMyPC. GoToMyPC is very easy to install and requires no firewall/router mods and is therefore more secure than option 1.

Sure, if there's a VPN in place you can certainly use Remote Desktop through it, and it doesn't have the weaknesses of #1. However, VPNs are not trivial to set up. Although it's possible (in hindsight, even likely) Jay may be accessing his work server through a VPN, to set up a VPN server for his home machine may not be easy or cheap.

I thought only Windows Server products contained VPN servers, but it looks like XP Pro does as well: http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/network/0,39044847,39050037-39000223c-1,00.htm

Nonetheless, to get it to work he'd probably need a static IP (usually an uptick in cost from basic ISP service), otherwise rely on a pseudostatic address not changing very often, or use some sort of dynamic DNS/IP mapping service. Router/firewall hardware would need to be VPN-enabled, or upgradeable to such via a firmware upgrade. Worse yet, some ISPs block certain ports/traffic types for residential customers/plans and it can be very difficult to diagnose/determine that they're blocking your traffic.

All of the above problems are avoided/bypassed by proxy services such as GoToMyPC. If you can handle the monthly or yearly cost it's a pretty compelling solution for casual and/or non-technical users, and worth consideration even for advanced users.