• I am a consultant so of course I don't run into the resistance to remote work the way employees do. I recently moved my business to North Carolina and work out of my Home Office almost exclusively although I occasionally travel to client sites. Under normal circumstances I use remote desktop to remote in to all my clients.

    I use TrueCrypt to set up mountable encrypted drives on my laptop, and I use it to store all sensitive data that I need to carry. I use VPN where provided by the client. Some small shops do not have the experience to get VPN set up so I use Hamachi (the free version) to set up a tunnel between my laptop and the system I remote desktop into on those clients who do not have VPN set up for me. I then use Comodo personal firewall to protect my laptop, in fact I run it on all of my systems even at the office when I am behind the hardware firewall.

    TrueCrypt, Hamachi and Comodo are all dead easy to set up and use. I set up a system at my home office with Hamachi and use a Hamachi VPN tunnel to get there when I am on the road. I can use Remote Desktop on my systems at home to do secure browsing (over a Hamachi VPN Tunnel) while on the road or in public.

    And yes, I get so much more done working at a home office. Having no commute saves an immense amount of time and gasoline. While I don't always work more hours in a day, they are more effective hours. I am also able to wedge in time with my son and daughter, even 10 or 15 minutes here and there during "the work day" so that it just feels like I am home more. I can attend school meetings and do many of the other things that are almost impossible if you have to "go to work" at an office somewhere.

    jwcolby54