Remote Desktop, VPN, VNC

[Blueobelisk]

Hey guys. Here's the situation: I have a desktop at my house, and I have a laptop I bring to school. Both are Windows 7 Home operating systems. Now, I like to work on my desktop, but at school I still have to gather with my teachers/friends and show them the projects I'm working on. (Mostly code, Unity projects, etc.)

Currently, I have all programs installed on both my laptop and my desktop, and I just copy my desktop's files to a flash drive/memory stick so I can use it on my laptop when I'm in school, but it's really inefficient having to do things twice. (When I'm doing stuff at school with my teacher it's a hassle to have to go back and repeat the process (setting stuff up) on my desktop.

With that out of the way, I've considered a few solutions:

1. One is Remote Desktoping my laptop to my desktop and just doing 100% of the work on my desktop. I have a free copy of Windows 7 Pro (so it's even possible) that I can install on my desktop if I partition the hard drive and dual boot (which I'd have to learn) later. But then since I'm on my school's internet I'd have to set up a VPN, too.

2. Just setting up a VPN to share files. I guess this would work so that I don't have to constantly copy things back and forth on my flash drive or email it to myself.

3. My friend mentioned that he did both VPN and VNC to connect to his desktop. I'm honestly not sure how VNC is different from remote desktoping.

I ask that you help me evaluate the solution, offer a new one, or perhaps give me insight on how easy/hard it would be for me to set this up? Perhaps you could even say that it isn't worth it.

The only experience I have on the topic is what I've googled, so anything you say is a lot. So thanks in advance for any help you can give.

[n0cturnal]

http://www.teamviewer.com/ perhaps?

[Undies]

www.logmein.com

amazing, its what my company uses across all sites for remoting in and dealing with any tech issues. It has a great free version too.

[TimDD]

I second using Teamviewer. It is AWESOME!

But make sure to go into Options - Advance, and disable all the auto-accept connections to your PC.

[Blueobelisk]

Thanks for the advice so far, I'm looking into both options.

[Cyanotical]

1. One is Remote Desktoping my laptop to my desktop and just doing 100% of the work on my desktop. I have a free copy of Windows 7 Pro (so it's even possible) that I can install on my desktop if I partition the hard drive and dual boot (which I'd have to learn) later. But then since I'm on my school's internet I'd have to set up a VPN, too.

not if they are both home, RDP server is disabled on Home edition, you need Pro or better

3. My friend mentioned that he did both VPN and VNC to connect to his desktop. I'm honestly not sure how VNC is different from remote desktoping.

this is the best option, as it is a secure connection, and doesn't rely on cloud based systems or have security holes like logmein or teamviewer

[Cyrops]

Not sure what kind of stuff you do, but, using teamviewer as example, it is laggy, also due to limitations, I guess in the TW itself?, you can't do much 'graphical transfer' so to say.

[Saltypoison]

www.logmein.com

amazing, its what my company uses across all sites for remoting in and dealing with any tech issues. It has a great free version too.

Sadly, they have eliminated the free version. It's 100/year for two computers.

[Blueobelisk]

Ohohoho. This Team Viewer is actually quite awesome. Of course I'm doing it right next to the actual computer I'm remote desktoping. I hope this is safe and like other people won't be able to access my desktop when I actually use it from school.

But thanks for the suggestion, it's really helpful.

At first I was going to complain because it felt a little laggy, but after a couple more tries it's okay.

Thanks again. I think this is a decent non-technical solution that will get the job done. (Because most of the things I said above were either business related or a little unnecessary for the purposes of what I'm doing.

[Deleted]

OK OP, i am a system engineer IRL and we deal with things like this every day at our customers.

First of all: logmein is retiring it's free service: you will have to pay to use logmein after somewhere next month.
Second of all it's a mix as you're not giving enough details. The projects/code are they large items? If they are large in size, storing them on a network share and connecting via vpn is the last thing you want as using a vpn connection to your home network will cause a huge delay in speed. Remote desktopping is a possibility but very clunky and you don't store the files locally on your laptop you take with you and you won't be able to access them offline.

Remote desktop: when you have large pieces or many files to transfer, get rdp (for example teamviewer or just the windows mscts service.
VPN: more for singular files or smaller projects i would say though its ease of use is key and you can have your files offline synced if you wanted to be sure.

i personally would make a vpn connection, map the connection to a drive and configure your laptop software to use the new mapped drive.
especially because if i need to present something i don't want to rely on a internet connection that might or might not be online.