Employees in all businesses may need, at one time or another, to access files on both their home and business computers from their smartphones or tablets. Sharing files across devices can be achieved in a number of ways, and in between the times they are hard at work, employees may even be able to get a little gaming done on the sly.
A recent article at PCWorld covers five main ways in which users can link their desk and mobile devices: remote desktop, remote file access, document sharing through the cloud, waking up computers remotely, and game streaming that utilizes the power of a PC to do the heavy lifting.
While that last option may not be strictly business-related, the other options can have a profound impact on how users are able to complete their work. First off, a remote desktop allows users to basically stream a feed of their desktops through their mobile devices. A remote desktop server makes that stream possible, and programs such as TeamViewer and Parallels Access can make it easy for users to provide themselves with secure passwords to their accounts and automatically link their devices through a simple platform. More advanced users can also take advantage of port forwarding and dynamic DNS through virtual network computing on their Windows PCs and Android (News - Alert) or iOS devices.
Does streaming an entire computer seem like a bit too much? Shared file access through TeamViewer's "file transfer" function can allow mobile devices access to all the files on the PC inside a basic interface. Cloud storage services such as DropBox can also achieve this sort of linkage if users set up their accounts to sync their devices. Furthermore, if employees just need access to office-style documents such as texts, spreadsheets, or presentations, they can upload files to Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service and then use Office Online (for free!) to edit those files directly in their Web browsers. Google (News - Alert) Docs works in a similar fashion and allows document editing from browsers and mobile apps.
Environmentally conscious employees can take advantage of the wake-on-LAN feature of PCs that allows a network interface to listen for a specific packet. Once it receives that packet, it can wake up, even while a PC is completely powered off. To achieve this feat, users will need to either forward ports from their home routers to local network routers, and then use a software program to use wake-on-LAN, or users can use software such as TeamViewer that will complete a similar process automatically.
Finally, when employees have a free moment, they can use services from Steam or Nvidia to link games running on their desktops to their mobile devices or other desktops. Although Steam only allows linkage between other in-home computers, Nvidia's newest graphics cards support streaming of games over the Internet to an Nvidia Shield handheld or tablet.