Absolute Best Tool For Fixing Your Mom's Computer

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "A good sketch is better than a long speech," or in other words, "A picture is worth a thousand words". When you get that inevitable call from your dad about the most recent "virus", or the friend who just can't get that software to install, you can either try to direct them to click the right button (no, the other button.... no, the one that ... sigh) or you can reach for the greatest troubleshooting tool of all, the remote screen share.

If you can see what they are seeing you can get a much better idea of what they are doing, or doing wrong, and save your very valuable time for other pursuits than trying to describe exactly how to perform the simplest of tasks. Remote Screen Sharing technology allows you to open a window on your computer that shows you exactly what the other person is seeing on their screen, and even allows you to take control of their keyboard and mouse (with their permission) and perform actions directly if needed. You may have even used some software that does this at work, such as Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection, or one of the versions of VNC, but each of those solutions requires lots of setup and is just a pain. These technologies do have the benefit of being the right price, free!

There is another class of remote screen sharing software that does away with the tedious setup and lets you get right to the screen sharing with little to no setup, but you pay the price for the ease of setup by having to purchase the software of the service. An example of this sort of service is GoToMeeting. There's lots of great features in GoToMeeting and I use it on an almost daily basis for work, but when I need to do some quick troubleshooting of my parent's computer this isn't really an option.

Before I wax eloquent about Join.Me let me first clarify that I am not affiliated with Join.Me, or LogMeIn, nor do I receive any compensation for making this recommendation in specific. That said, I would like to whole heartedly recommend that you check out Join.Me.

Join.Me is in the category of the no-hassle, zero setup pieces of software that you can use on the fly with technically challenged family members, but is also completely free. There's no signup, no account registration, no ads. Nothing! I cannot imagine a more simple setup than they provide, and the service works great. You can share a screen with multiple people, give a person access to use your keyboard and mouse, chat online, use your smart phone as a viewer, conference call (not toll free) and more.

To get started you just ask the person who needs to share their screen to go to the join.me web site and click on the "share" button.

Clicking on the "share" link will download a very small executable. The sharer runs this and within seconds, usually, they have a small control panel at the top of their screen (see right). At this point they are ready to receive any connections. They are issued a unique 9 digit code that is all they need to pass on to anyone who wants to join in the screen sharing. They can click on the link in the control panel to send a quick email, or just tell you the nine numbers over the phone.

As a viewer you also go to join.me and type in the 9 magic numbers given by the sharer, and presto, you are connected over the web to the user's desktop. That's all there is to it. With just a few minutes you can be up and connected to your loved one's tragically broken computer, fixing the mystery virus, or whatever.

If you need additional features I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there is a Pro version of the service that includes link personalization, meeting management, and user management. It also has support for international conference calling, so that can be a plus.

Next time you get a phone call remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, and screen sharing is worth a thousand hair pulls!