>Hi,
>
>I use Watchguard firewalls to establish a triangle between home and two offices and feel comfortable (perhaps foolishly?).
>
>Now other people in my office want/need remote access and are looking at LogMeIn, but I am worried about security and would prefer a hardware based VPN, but more portable in design than what I am using now.
>
>Can anyone share their experiences in this area?

For an average end-user, who wants to access to (say) an office machine from anywhere, 3rd-party mediated services like LogMeIn and GoToMyPC are hard to beat.

The security model is very good - arguably better than direct-connect solutions requiring firewall setups. Using LogMeIn as an example - LogMeIn will allow access to machines behind a corporate firewall that has all incoming ports blocked. All communications between a remote user and LogMeIn, and subsequently between the remote user and the office (host) PC are SSL-encrypted (HTTPS).

The remote user first logs into LogMeIn with an account name and password (known to LogMeIn). Once validated, the user can connect to his machine. This requires another password, which is unknown to LogMeIn. This prevents access by a rogue LogMeIn employee.

The big downside is you have to have a machine in the office, running all the time, waiting for a remote connection. But if you do, you get all the advantages of remote control vs. a VPN.

In terms of quality of service, in my experience using direct Microsoft RDP (or the TS client for IE) is the "gold standard". With broadband at both ends (here, generally limited to 512Kbps upload), the experience is so good, sometimes you forget you're working remotely.

Neither LogMeIn nor GoToMyPC are as good as RDP, although both are quite usable over broadband. Both are easy enough to use that end-users don't need tech support. I don't know how well either work at speeds less than North American broadband, but Citrix (GoToMyPC) for sure, and I imagine LogMeIn as well, have a lot of experience providing a good user experience over limited bandwidth.

For small numbers of users, LogMeIn etc. make a lot of sense. If you don't need to remote-print or transfer files, LogMeIn is even free. But if you do need a pay version, once you get more than 5 users or so, you can start to consider other solutions.