Windows® 8.1 IN DEPTH

39. Remote Desktop and Remote Access

Using Your Computer Remotely

With today’s global availability of the Internet, you expect to be able to access the websites that hold your email and data from anywhere, anytime. You can store documents in the cloud for global access. But what about stuff that you didn’t remember to—or don’t want to—store “out there”? Why can’t you have the same global access to your own private data on your computer at home? Well, as it turns out, you can, through features that are built in to Windows, and also through some third-party products. We describe these in this chapter.

If your computer runs Windows 8.1 Pro or Enterprise edition, your computer has a spiffy feature called Remote Desktop that lets it accept connections ...