Leave Your Devices At Home
When I travel, I usually carry a notebook PC that I mostly use to check e-mail. But I might be able to leave that machine at home next time now that I've subscribed to LapLink Everywhere.
The new service, from LapLink, Inc. (www.laplink.com), allows you to access your e-mail, contacts and calendar from any Web-enabled device, including PCs, Macs, hotel and airport Internet terminals and even personal digital assistants like the Palm computer and PocketPC as well as cell phones that have Web access. You can also transfer files between your home or office PC and a remote PC, or create guest accounts to allow others to access some or all of your PC's files. The service costs $9.95 a month or $89.95 for a year.
Although any device can be used to access e-mail, you must have a PC and a copy of either Outlook or Outlook Express (which comes free with most versions of Windows) running on your desktop machine, and that machine must be turned on and have a full-time connection to the Internet such as a DSL, cable modem or company or campus network.
Here's how it works: You start by downloading and installing the LapLink Everywhere software on your desktop machine. That causes a small application to run and turn your machine into a "server." Then, when you want to access your mail or other information, go to another PC or any other Web-enabled device, visit www.mylaplink.com, and enter your user name and password.
At that point you have access to your e-mail, Outlook contacts, calendar, notes and tasks as well as any files on your PC.
What you see on the screen of the remote device doesn't look at all like your PC desktop or Outlook. Instead, you see a Web page that presents you with the same data that you would get if you were running Outlook. For all of this to work, the home or office PC where Outlook (or Outlook Express) is installed must be running, but you're not actually connecting directly to your PC. Instead, both your home PC and remote device are talking to LapLink's server, which is acting as an intermediary between the two.
The level of connectivity between the remote and desktop devices is remarkable. If, for example, you add an appointment to your calendar via the Web site, that appointment is also added to your Outlook calendar on your desktop PC. Even mail that you send via the Web winds up in your Outlook Sent Mail folder.
Another benefit is that LapLink Everywhere will not display e-mail that you have filtered out if you're running a spam filter such as Cloudmark's SpamNet (www.cloudmark.com) This can be incredibly important if you're using a small device or have a slow connection. Spam is bad enough on a PC but intolerable on a handheld device.
There are several other products that allow you to access e-mail without using a laptop. One option, depending on your Internet service provider, is to use a device accessing e-mail through a Web connection. Not all ISPs offer this but some do. Also, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and other Web-based mail services let you import regular mail into their accounts, which does give you remote access in most situations. Webbox.com, which charges $15 a year, gives you access to e-mail from any Web site, but you don't get all the other features that you get with LapLink Everywhere.
Another option is to use a remote control service such as GoToMyPC.com, which is a clever system that gives you complete remote control of your home or office PC from any remote PC. The service, which costs $14.95 a month after a free trial period, lets you run any program on your home or office system, but the downside is that you must be on a Windows PC on the remote end (no running Microsoft Office from a cell phone) and it's fairly slow, even with broadband connections.
A syndicated technology columnist for nearly two decades, Larry Magid serves as on air Technology Analyst for CBS Radio News. His technology reports can be heard several times a week on the CBS Radio Network. Magid is the author of several books including "The Little PC Book."
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By Larry Magid