Can PCs Control a Mac via Remote Desktop?

[mrlynn]

I am thinking of putting a Mac in our medical office full of PCs, to reduce the chances of malware infiltration, and restricting Internet use to the Mac.

But it would be a pain for people to get up and leave their desks to get to the only Mac in the office (and no, our office software does not run on Macs, and we can't afford to fill the office with Macs and let everyone run Windows under virtualization).

So I'm wondering if the PCs could simply log onto the Mac and take control via Remote Desktop—one at a time, of course.

Possible?

Of course there's another wrinkle: Some of the sites they have to go to work only with Internet Exploder. Yes, friends, in the commercial world there are many dinosaurs like that. And AFAIK there is no version of IE that runs under OS X.

/Mr Lynn

[Seacrest]

VNC (the protocol) is cross platform.

But each platform's proprietary remote capabilities are not.

MS has a Remote client for Macs to control Windows, but not the other way around.
I think Apple has based their latest remote desktop on the VNC stack.

So the answer is VNC clients on Windows can control Macs.

[D-Rod]

[mrlynn]

Hmm. . . Seacrest, could VNC be left open on the Mac so that any of maybe 15 PCs could access it with a click (we're not dealing with very computer-savvy people here)? Somehow I doubt it, but I don't know enough about the various flavors of VNC.

Dennis R, I meant current (or at least recent) versions of IE. Would those sites work with IE 5.2 for Mac? Guess I could try it. . .

/Mr Lynn

[jdc]

logmein.com can do it, but not sure of the speed over a local network

[mrlynn]

jdc wrote:
logmein.com can do it, but not sure of the speed over a local network

I use LogMeIn, but can't expect people in a busy medical office to go through LMI's tedious log-in procedures just to get on the Internet.


/Mr Lynn

[John B.]

Wouldn't a proxy server, firewall, or other network security device be much more transparent? I have these scary visions of 15 "not very computer-savvy people" yelling across the office "who's on the Internet" while waiting to use a remote desktop client to run a generations-old browser. I love my Macs as much as the next person, but waiting on a remote client to run Mac IE 5.2 would make me scream.

[Tofer]

You can set up VNC so that it is a simple click to connect (the password is stored on most clients). I think the idea has merit, but the whole sharing part might be a bit odd.

[ztirffritz]

Why not just install Linux on the PCs then install Windows in a Virtual machine. Use Linux just for browsing so that you don't get viruses?