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I'm looking for something SIMILAR to Citrix but free/relatively inexpensive. I have a guy that runs a POS/Inventory app for his small business and he wants to run it at home for bookkeeping and at the shop for obvious reasons. Right now, he does work at home, saves, copies the DB to a USB drive, takes it to work, copies it over, opens it there. The app doesn't allow for custom locations of the DB either, so he can't just leave it on the USB drive. Clearly you can see a place for corruption, or overwriting a newer file if you're not careful, especially with 3 different people (himself, secretary, and his wife) all using it frequently.

I'd love to be able to "share" the application off of the workstation at the shop for him to access at home or from anywhere really, similar to Citrix. The issue is the cost of Citrix to use 1 program between 3 people all within a 5 mile radius is unjustifiable.

Options:
QNextMyPC - Free, haven't tested yet
Hamachi + RDP - Cheap ($20/year), doable but a little bit convoluted
Straight RDP via DynDNS domain - Free, same drawbacks as Hamachi + RDP
...?

Theres GOTTA be something similar out there for cheap/free. He's not unwilling to spend money, its just a matter of it not being ridiculous money. I'd guess up to $100 one time or $5 a month or so.

This is what a friend of mine uses for free: http://www.no-ip.com/services/managed_d ... c_dns.html

It might not be free for business use, but I didn't see anything that said otherwise.

To the cloud? Maybe I'm misunderstanding here (sleep deprieved but unwilling to sleep because its Friday and I need my Mass Effect 3 fix), but I think Windows can fix this for you. You can use Windows Live Mesh to sync folder across PCs. If the app is installed on both his home and work PC, you should be able to sync the folders the data is saved in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Mesh

Not necessarily to the 'cloud' per se. I would like to do application sharing, not just file sharing.

If I limit the scope to file sharing, I could just use drop box and mountpoints/symlinks in windows to make it THINK its the same file. I'd prefer something that runs the application remotely.

Corrado wrote:

Not necessarily to the 'cloud' per se. I would like to do application sharing, not just file sharing.

If I limit the scope to file sharing, I could just use drop box and mountpoints/symlinks in windows to make it THINK its the same file. I'd prefer something that runs the application remotely.

Hm. Windows Live Mesh also has an RDP component to it, although YMMV, sometimes it works great, sometimes its a bit slow. Once configured, you can remotely access that PC via Microsoft's Live service, either via a web browser or the Windows Live Mesh client. If both machines are windows its worth trying out since its free and there.

Could maybe use VMware to put the whole System on a thumbdrive instead.

So why not just remote desktop into his work computer from home using RDP or something like Logmein? I realize you're only thinking one application now, but sure as shootin' you'll figure out something for that one application and he'll want to be able to email or get to spreadsheets or something else too.

Here at work I use a no-ip dynamic DNS to get to the remote web workplace of our Windows Small business server that allows me and others to access their work desktops from home. I also use the RDP client to hit the server directly using port 3389 forwarded to the server directly.

It's really not convoluded at all - you can actually save an RDP connection file just for his work desktop, store that on his flashdrive and assuming he's using a windows machine, he can access it from anywhere he has a desktop and internet connection.

Did I mention it's free and it has "just worked" for the last 5 years or so?

EDIT: You can also specify an application to launch when the connection is made so that might the last tweak that convinces you.

Tons of free RDP (remote) software solutions out there... I think we've rehashed this earlier, but can't recall the thread. But here are some links for ideas:

TeamViewer: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx?cdsplit=D

LogMeIn: https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/

Remote Control PC: http://www.remote-control-pc.com/

thegleek wrote:

Tons of free RDP (remote) software solutions out there... I think we've rehashed this earlier, but can't recall the thread. But here are some links for ideas:

TeamViewer: http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx?cdsplit=D

LogMeIn: https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/

Remote Control PC: http://www.remote-control-pc.com/

Yeah I wasn't looking to expose the whole PC, just a singular application. I ended up just going with LogMeIn Pro for him as he needed printer pass through. $70/year isn't a bad gig, and I use LogMeIn all the time myself. He seems pleased with it, I was just hoping to make it a little simpler for him. Oh well. Thanks for hte info.