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Away from home

How many times have we all been stuck away from our computer? Countless. And its even worse for us with no laptops.. So what do you do? Write little reminders of things we could be doing, play Angry Birds, or simply zone out and listen to your favorite music (currently for me its We Are Augustines, Matt & Kim, and Susan Enan. Hows that for eclectic?).

No more, its time to become productive.

Introduce LogMeIn.

I’ve been trying out several different free remote control software apps from itunes. Nothing I found seemed to be reliable enough, user friendly, or secure. These apps require you open their app on the computer you wish to remote control, and most of the time, log in, before you can control. These apps on your desktop take a considerable about of memory to keep open and running. I found myself in several situations where I would go to use the app on my phone while away from my office and realize I forgot to open the app on my iMac.. Useless..

I decided to drop a few bones on LogMeIn Ignition. With a simple background app running on your computer you have 100% access to absolutely anything! LogMeIn running on my iMac doesn’t seem to be taking much memory to run and once you install it you never have to log in again, and it activates at once after you turn your computer on.

Why I prefer this app over the others:

Security:
LogMeIn Ignition forces you to log into the app, as well as log into the computer with the username & password that is personally in use on the specific computer. The app offers to remember the passwords if you would like, but I suggest you tell it not to for security (especially if you are controlling someone else’s computer!).

User Friendly:
Beautiful interface, simple to navigate the computer you are controlling, and I’ve never experienced a crash! This is while I’m running Photoshop on my iMac, from my iPad in another state! Users can use the LogMeIn software from anywhere there is internet. You can choose to run the software from your smartphone, iPad, or any internet browser, pretty much as flexible as you could possibly get! Plus you aren’t forced to open any software on your computer, its already running.

Power Saver:
Most of the other apps I tried won’t let you wake your computer up from sleep mode, LogMeIn will! Keep your electricity bill lower and extend the life of your computer while still retaining the ability to remote access your system from anywhere!

Downsides:
One con is the iPhone/iPad app cost $30. But you do get it for both, so if you have and use both its like $15 a piece. (I have used it on both! Not as easy on the phones smaller screen, but it works!) The basic desktop software, however, is free to install. There is a pro version you can purchase and use with a yearly fee, but this is way more than I will ever need. (File sharing desktop to desktop, specialized software for your computer, really nothing to do with the LogMeIn Ignition app)
Like all other remote control apps, it doesn’t do well with any type of movement. Think about it though, you are streaming quite a bit of data over the internet. (Cell internet at that!) So don’t’ expect to be able to run Hulu or any of your iTunes movies from it..

*Note I do not work for LogMeIn, I’m just a huge fan of what they offer! There may be cheaper or better software out there, but for what I do and what I’ve compared it to this works best for me. I encourage you to do your own research and find what app works best for you and your budget!

Enjoy!

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