pcanywhere

Hi,I connect my laptop to my office pc using pcanywhere using a normal phone line and analogue modem when am at home.Just wanted to know if it would be viable for me to use a cell phone (nokia 7210) as a modem when am travelling and would it work coz sometimes using my 56k modem the connection tends to be slow.
Chandak76

It should work, but depending on the data transfer rate of your phone it would probably be awfully slow.....

ChanDak76 –

I worked for Symantec for over 3 years; pcAnywhere was one of the several products I handled. To answer your question in short the answer is no.

In long the reasons why? First Symantec does not and will not support such an environment, period! Even if it has worked since the dawn of time then it stopped.
They do not support that product in ANY wireless form. The product was not designed to work nor is it guaranteed to work, no work a round. Further more if you call their tech support they will not help you until you get it hard wired

Why? There is a latency issue, PCA needs 200ms to work proper, with wireless it could be as high as 3000 ms (3 seconds) or better. PCA 10.5.x and below hooks the mouse, keyboard and video thus it needs to send all that data back and forth through your transport media, plus more junk such as encryption, backgrounds, mouse movements, etc… there’s a lot of junky fixed modems that have a hard time with this, now you want to torture it with wireless??

Now let’s talk about your cell phone. Today’s cell phones are digital which uses happy little ones and zeros to process the signal and weed out garbage (where as cell phones from 15-20 years ago were analog and did not). If you get into a bad location and the phone does not have a strong (full scale meter) signal the modem tones may very well be filtered out by mistake, thus causing a failure and of course frustration! Not only that but, even if you did have optimum conditions you are still fighting the latency issue as mentioned above.

If this is something you MUST have, then I would suggest one of two things.
1) Use PCA 11.x – this is new code! Works with API calls instead of hooks. Still not supported nor guaranteed but if you need PCA this is the one you want to try.
2) Try a different Remote Control product. I find that GoToMyPc ( gotomypc.com ) is very surprising on the speed and forgiveness. This product uses Java to connect. Then from the Remote you connect to the Host from a webpage and shazzam you’re connected. Downfall: unlike PCA where you have a CD to install on all your computers whenever, where ever, you have to download the software from their website onto your host and this is a monthly FEE based product.

What I would suggest, try GoToMyPc’s free trial (requires a CC to activate but they don’t charge you until trial time is up or you cancel prior to end time).

Purchase PCA 11.x, try it out. If it don’t work out for you Symantec offers a 60 day return policy (less S&H), even if you download the software from them online it is returnable! Even if you purchased the CD from some other retailer! How can you lose? Just save your proof of purchase.

There ya have it... authoritative answer

Thank You Very Much for help.I've tried gotomypc and i think that will be my best bet for now.
Thanks again

chandak76,

While Jack's answer was very details and gives you pretty much the info you need, I'm here to suggest a few alternatives.

In my past experience I have used several products to allow me to remote control remote servers, amongst them being PC Anywhere, Network Administrator, Netmeeting and VNC.

From all the above, my favourite remains Network Administrator, while the 2nd best is VNC simply cause its free, where as Network Admin isnt.

The only thing these programs do not have, is the dialup service, which isnt difficult to add anyways using your standard Windows operating system, and they are ALOT smaller and lighter on the O/S when compared with PC Anywhere.

What I have found with most Symantec products is that they are extreamly heavy on the system, something I always avoid installing simply cause it just makes the computer slowler. Take for example the famous Norton Antivirus ... which is 30 or more MB's! I use Vet, an australian product that does the same job and is only 3 MB's in size, while the virus definitions are just over 1 MB, whereas Nortons are usually 3-4 MB's.

If you take a good look around, I'm sure you will find products that will do the same job, faster, and also cost less, or in some cases are free!

Cheers,