How to Connect Your Home PC to Your Work PC

It can be very advantageous to have a connection between your work PC and your home PC. This allows for much more freedom when you occasionally work for home, and it can save you a trip to the office under certain circumstances.

I try to give myself as much freedom as possible in completing my work. That means having a dependable connection to my home PC from work and vice-versa. Here's a quick guide to establishing such a connection between two computers.

Talk to your work IT department. The first thing that you'll need to do is to talk to your work IT department, because they might have a firewall set up to prevent a remote connection between an office computer and a computer outside of the office. This is commonplace to prevent theft and to dissuade potential hackers.

Ask your IT department to make an exception, and if possible, get their help in setting up the remote connection. They'll know your company networks much better than you will, and they'll be able to help you out with the frustrating minor details that you'll need to address later in the process.

Find the right remote desktop software. There are a number of remote desktop programs available, but they work on the same basic principles. There are even a few web based options. However, it's best to use standalone software like Real VNC, Team Viewer 5, Windows Live! Mesh, or Go To My PC. Of these, Windows Live! Mesh is a great choice as it works well and won't cost you anything as long as you've got a non-basic version of Windows.

Have someone on hand to help you with the setup. You will need to install the remote desktop software on both your work PC and your home PC, so you'll avoid a lot of frustration by having someone work on one of the computers while you set up the other one. This way you won't have to run back and forth to give information about one computer to the other computer.

One computer will act as a host and the other will access that host. You will need the IP address of the host computer, which will be provided by the remote desktop software that you use, and you'll also need a password. Pick a very secure password; a hacker could control anything on your computer. An alphanumeric password with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters should be sufficient.

After your remote desktop software is installed, you'll simply need to run the host software before you leave for work in the morning to access your home PC at will. Regardless of the software you choose, it's a pretty simple set up as long as you think about your work firewall before you install.

Have any questions about setting up a remote connection between a home PC and a work PC? Post below.