A friend of mine emailed me yesterday asking me if I had heard of LogMeIn.  I forgot that I had been using it since the beginning of the year and probably should write something about it since it’s been a pretty useful tool.   Basically, it’s a program that allows me to remotely access my home computer from pretty much anywhere I have an internet connection.  All I had to do was install the program on whichever computer was the one I wanted to access.  It took just a few minutes.  Oh yeah, and it’s free.  You can upgrade to the Pro2 version for a fee which offers additional features such as document transfer, printing, and sound.  You can try out their free trial before you decide to purchase.  (I actually installed the Pro trial and it says it was supposed to expire back in February but it seems like  when I log in I’m still using that version… so kudos for that.)  If you’re someone like me who automatically becomes everyone’s default helpdesk because you so happen to work in a related field, I recommend checking out LogMeIn to aid you in that process.

I haven’t tried their VPN product called Hamachi yet but I hear it’s pretty good as well.

I think most people know that if you want to take a screenshot of your desktop, all you need to hit is CTRL + Print Screen.  But did you know if you hit ALT + Print Screen, it just takes a screenshot of the one active window?  This method makes it much easier when you get an error message that you want to include in your email to your helpdesk team and you don’t want to show every program you have currently open.

Also, if you use Firefox, I’ve found the Screengrab! plugin quite handy when you have a very long web page that you want to completely capture rather than just the visible portion on the screen.