With more people than ever using 'em, it's probably difficult to find an Ars reader who doesn't have a family member or old friend that's lost at sea when it comes to keeping a computer running. And when that familiar call or e-mail comes—"Do you have a minute? How do you..."—it's instantly obvious. This person needs a significant amount of long-term help.

In today's ever more technological and connected world, these requests tend to come often. And while it's maddening enough playing amateur IT professional for someone in the same house, how do you cope when increasingly the tech-challenged live across town or even across the country? To no one's surprise, there are as many strategies out there as there are readers.

Luckily for you (and agonizingly for me), I've had some experience here.

Users love you for this one simple trick!

Find me someone who's more competent with computers than anyone around them, and I'll show you a person who tends to think there's "one simple trick" that would make it easy for everybody else too. Unfortunately, that's almost never the case. Much like everyone's favorite oft-repeated Facebook status, it's complicated. Different people have different needs, different wants, and different... adjustments to reality.

Most of these "simple" ideas boil down to "make everybody use what I like" and/or "don't let them do things I don't want them to." Sadly, this strategy works out about as well for computer support as it does for anything else humans care about. In particular, two "quick fixes" infuriate me like no other.

Give ’em a $my_favorite_thing—it won’t even need support!

It’s tempting to think the solution to all of your support problems is just a Mac/an iPad/a Chromebook/a Linux install away. It can work—if it didn’t, Macs wouldn’t be a thing—but success in this route is pretty rare. Often, the $new_thing looks different from the PC your customer is used to. The buttons on the windows are in funny places. The software has different names, and it works differently, and their friends can’t open their documents and vice-versa. Yes, LibreOffice runs on anything, but good luck getting it to display "Fw: fw: fw: fw: fw: Grandpa Bumpy’s Awesome Slide Show With Really Cool Music.ppt" the way the author intended. (File that under “things I wish I did not know, but I do.”)

Further Reading Asus’ Chromebook Flip looks and feels great, unless you’re typing on it and the touch interface works differently, and there’s this super-shiny, super-tempting app store that your user might decide to install one of everything from. But the really evil part is that very few new tablet users stop using their PC entirely. For you as the unwilling remote IT crew, more than likely you’ll just have two things to support instead of one. Pass.

If your user just wants an Internet appliance, a Chromebook actually looks pretty good. If they already use Chrome, it might be a slam dunk. It's basically an impossible-to-screw-up, really nice little machine with light weight, good performance, and long battery life—all for about $200 brand new. But “Chrome Store” and “Chrome Apps” or not, it really is just a browser-in-a-box. If that works for your user, great. If it doesn’t, they’re going to complain. (Worse comes to worst, the machine becomes a wonderful resource for playing "who’s that actor?" while watching TV.)

Don't get rid of Windows, just secure it!

Taking admin access away from your user entirely can work. But most friends-and-family type users will resent this strategy heavily.

Before you know it, the PC in question goes to a local fix it store or friend "who's good with computers," and the passwords get reset. Then you're right back where you started: needing to provide frequent support for the things that go wrong... only now, your advice is trusted less or maybe even outright resented. File suggestions like this under "point and laugh." You may be able to get away with treating your kids this way, but you probably shouldn't try it with adults.

The quick fix doesn't exist. Whether you switch your user’s platform or not, you'll probably still need to support them. Luckily, as long as they've got a minimal Internet connection, doing this has gotten a lot easier recently. Nowadays if you want to get serious about remote support platforms for aiding the average computer user, there are two successful camps of thought: "do it yourself" and "remote control as a service."

Do It Yourself: Direct connection

This approach, for the most part, will be something Ars readers should point and laugh at. Yes, you can forward TCP port 3389 through your router and use Remote Desktop Connection to take direct control of a Windows PC. You can also forward TCP port 22 and SSH directly into their Linux or OS X machine. But you almost certainly shouldn't.

For one thing, RDP is only available on the Pro or Ultimate versions of Windows. It's also difficult or impossible to use either SSH or RDP to remote control the machine and show the user what you're doing as you do it. In an ideal world, this is the ultimate goal, the crucial difference between "giving a person a fish" and "teaching a person to fish."

Let's poke a little more at this idea. You have to forward a port through the router, which means you either have to buy the person you're helping a router, or you have to reconfigure the modem the ISP delivered. If you reconfigure the modem the ISP delivered, it won't be long at all before their Internet connection goes out after a storm, they call the ISP, and the ISP's support walks them through factory resetting it (thus breaking your remote control). If you bought them their own router, the same ISP support is going to convince them to unplug it and put it in the closet on the same support call. Further Reading The secret to online safety: Lies, random characters, and a password manager

On top of everything already discussed, there are serious security concerns with the “direct connection” approach. The service itself will be exposed directly to the Internet, using whatever password(s) your family/friend picks, which we all know is likely to be fairly weak. It's time to move on to other strategies.

Remote Control as a service

As much as it galls me to say it, this is the true sweet spot. Using a remote control service provider gives you all the bits and pieces that are missing from previous remote support strategies. You can hide your family's terrible passwords behind the much stronger one you use on your own account. The connections are outbound, not inbound, on both ends, which means zero firewall configuration necessary. Everything will continue working even if your family gets a new router/factory resets theirs/changes their internal IP address. The better services unify the same remote control interface across a wide selection of operating systems and offer clipboard integration, remote printing, file transfer, chat, and more. Considering all the feasible options given time and energy constraints, the question really isn't "should I use a provider," it's "which provider should I use?"





GoToMyPC

GoToMyPC is one of the early pioneers in remote control services. Dating back to 1997, it's been owned by Citrix since 2003. In 2015, there isn't much new to say about it as remote control service providers go. GoToMyPC hits the major features reasonably well, but at $12 per month per PC, it's overpriced—especially if you have several machines to support.

Other than the price and the "as seen on TV" graphic design look of the service, the biggest turn-offs are the in-browser Java pop-up it wanted to spawn on my Linux workstation and the service's failure to create its own Windows Firewall rules on the machine I wanted to remote control.

Pros:

It works

It says "Citrix" on the tin

Cons:

Requires admin privileges to install

Requires a reboot after installation

Does not automatically create all necessary Windows Firewall rules on hosts

Password spaghetti—needs account password, access password, and windows password

Extremely weaklinux/Web client support—wants to launch an in-browser Java popup. Yes, really.

No support for remote-controlling Linux, Android, or iOS devices

Relatively weak (AES-128) encryption

Expensive—$12 per month per PC, period.

Verdict: You can do better.