Product Reviews

Some applications are a bit like rock stars. They're essential and wonderful at one moment, and then start a slow slide into irrelevance as the next big thing approaches. Like Norton Utilities or McAfee Anti-Virus, LapLink - the suite of remote access and setup tools - seems more like a humble roadie. Ignored and under-appreciated, it's the sort of product that makes running your systems that little bit simpler, by providing the bread-and-butter functionality that allows PCs and notebooks to share and communicate. With its new product LapLink Tech, Travelling Software claims to have now created the 'ultimate' suite of remote control, access and copying tools. In other words, everything you need for mobile technical support.

Like LapLink 95 and Carbon Copy 32 (reviewed issue 36, p188), LapLink Tech lets you choose between three basic connection types. There's a cable link, via supplied serial or parallel leads, a modem connection, and communication is possible over the Internet and a network too, using IPX and TCP/IP protocols. When you've decided how you want to link, there's an array of possibilities that can follow, ranging from a simple text chat between PCs, file transfer and full remote control of a system.

Getting the connection up and running is a simple job. Just install LapLink Tech on the host PC, which will be controlled remotely, and then set it to listen. Following that, it's a simple matter of installing the software on the guest, connecting any necessary cables and then telling LapLink how you'd like to communicate. To aid you through the software setup, there's an excellent active help window, which will guide you through the necessary steps, and which has details of associated topics.

As you may be dealing with highly critical data, there's a great deal of native security built in. At the lowest level, you can set the host to bare all and allow anyone access to all of its secrets. At the other end of the spectrum, a session can be governed by passwords, restricted access and even guarded with encryption. As a final level of security, LapLink Tech ships with Dr Solomon's Virus protection

I attached two PCs via the parallel cable and gave the guest full control of the host. With the simple LapLink interface, it's then only a matter of selecting the remote control icon and a representation of the host's desktop is displayed. Although the parallel link means that the response isn't always super smooth, the link proved very robust and gave stable access to all the software, including Outlook 98 and Internet Explorer 4. More importantly, it also gives you complete access to all the system configuration variables, which can quickly be altered.

This sort of remote control is of obvious benefit to the IT professional interested in remote system maintenance. You could dial into your desktop PC from a mobile location to do necessary remedial or upgrade work. LapLink Tech can also be used over a LAN, and with it installed on all workstations a system manager could take control of an ailing PC and stroke it back into life.

Continuing the theme of maintenance and rudimentary system management, LapLink Tech packs some other interesting features, including Ghost Special Edition from Binary Research - a DOS-based disk-cloning system. Along with managing all the low-level FDISK and partitioning issues associated with a new hard drive, Ghost also facilitates the transfer of a whole drive's contents over a parallel cable. You can also take a drive image and save it as one file, transfer from one partition to another, or store a partition as an image.

If your needs are slightly less grandiose, and extend only as far as file copying from one system to another, things could not be simpler. There's a Wizard to help, and with the LapLink Tech interface showing both the host and guest PC in Windows, the job's easy.

Of course, having two copies of a working document that's of critical importance does have the drawback of causing conflict and confusion; which one is the most up-to-date? LapLink Tech navigates this problem by allowing two PCs to share a document or even a folder. All you've got to do is follow the Wizard and LapLink's Xchange Agent will automatically pick up newer revisions of a file, regardless of which computer it's on. If one PC is lacking a file, LapLink Tech will make sure it receives it.

If you have PCs that need linking together for data transfer and remote support, this is a strong product. At £145, it seems expensive, but considering the functionality and extra applications bundled LapLink Tech is reasonable value.

For a simple two-system network, an Ethernet solution will always be cheaper and faster, but, for a variety of support needs, Laplink Tech is a convenient answer.