Personal Cloud

[elocinanna]

Hey there,

I have read about cloud computing and from what I understand it's just a way of running a program on one computer, then using it on another, with the host pc's memory/cpu being used but the controls come from and the program's output being streamed to another computer, that needn't be as powerful.

 

I was wondering if there was a way of doing this sort of thing in my house, having our big powerful desktop pc running a game or other program, but looking at my laptop screen and controlling it with the laptop keyboard and touchpad. That'd be really great. We also have another laptop, could we run two programs on the pc (memory permitting), each being displayed and controlled by a serperate laptop? All three computers have bluetooth and wifi, so it'd be nice if we were able to do it wirelessly.

 

I assume there is a way of doing this but I'm not sure what to search for so I come here for help.

I don't mind paying for new software or hardware but if there's a free option that'd be even better!

 

One thing that might be important is that the desktop is currently running Vista Home Premium, one laptop is on XP Home and the other has XP Media Centre but if I need a new OS to get this to work I'd love to try a Linux Distro.

 

Thanks for any help, if you could just recommend a program, linux package or even just tell me what what I'm talking about is called and I'll google it.

 

(I'm guessing it's not called cloud computing because the idea of that is having a network of computers doing the remote functions instead of just the one.)

[Jelly Bean]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

 

Do you mean Virtual Machine?

 

The following links explain it and how to.

 

VMware Cloud Computing with Virtualization, Green IT, Virtual Machine & Servers

 

Windows Virtual PC: Home Page

 

Virtual machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[elocinanna]

That sounds like the kind of thing, except the main thing is to get a program that's running on the desktop pc to be displayed on my laptop screen and controlled by my laptop keyboard etc. I just want to stream the i/o data from the program, using very little of that laptop's resources.

 

For instance if I wanted to play a game that I couldn't play on my laptop because of system requirements but my desktop is more powerful and can run it. Is there a way of running it on the desktop pc in the study, but controlling it/seeing it/playing it on my laptop in the lounge? I can't see why it couldn't be done, I just don't know what type of setup I'd need. It'd be even better if I could run two seperate programs on my desktop (like having MS Word and media player open) and on one laptop be displaying and controlling MS Word and the other laptop be displaying/making the sounds/receiving keystrokes from the other laptop.

 

Do you know what I'm after? The virtual machines seem more designed for someone who wants to use a program that needs one OS and another program that needs another OS. So far I've had no OS compatibility problems, I'd just like a way to run a program on my powerful pc, but be physically using it on a laptop, maybe in a different room.

 

Thankyou for your patience.

[snow]

Probably the closest thing you are referring to is remote desktop:

Turn on Remote Desktop in Windows 7 or Vista :: the How-To Geek

 

However I'm not sure if this will work for gaming, as the latency time between displaying the image and your actions might be too much to make it practial.

 

Remote desktop will work great for normal programs that don't require split-second reaction times. Slower games like RTS titles may also work OK, but again I'm not sure how bad the delay will be.

[Tootech]

You can use VNC to connect to your networked computers.

 

It will run well, and should do all you need.

 

RealVNC - RealVNC remote control software

 

There is a free edition, and there are other versions out there if you Google them.

 

RealVNC - RealVNC remote control software

 

RealVNC - VNC Free Edition 4.1