Remotely Control Your Macs or a Friend's Mac For Free

If you have several Macs on a local network or a friend or relative who occasionally needs your help to maintain their Mac across the internet, the best Mac software on the market is Netopia's Timbuktu. In fact, Netopia has a set of simple help documents that allow you to address almost any situation that you might encounter. Timbuktu is excellent Mac software. It sells for $190 for 2 Macs.

On the other hand, there is a free, open source alternative if you are running Mac OS X that works extremely well and is easy to set up and run at least in simple cases. The software to place on the Mac that you want to control is called "OSXvnc". The software to place on the Mac to control the others is called oddly "Chicken of the VNC".

OSXvnc is a full-featured VNC server for use with Mac OS X. OSXvnc provides a view of the screen of the Mac to any other Mac running a VNC client and it enables that Mac to remotely control the mouse and keyboard. You can download OSXvnc 1.3.1 from sourceforge.