Lets say you have a pretty decent XP-Pro machine, but it is getting a little tired, maybe you just feel  you have to get into Vista, and keep up with the joneses. But you really are intimidated by that big  step. none of your programs will run, all your data, all your customized features on good ole XP, are  just so comfortable, you just cant stand the thought of dropping everything for a week (maybe a dozen weeks) or so while you  carefully re-build your workspace to make it workable. (Mick,October--December 2007)

Well, if your old computer was XP-Home, you may be out of luck. But if you have XP-Pro, read on. Have you ever heard of "Remote Desktop"? This is a nifty capability, starting with some versions of Windows 2000. With it, Windows included an ability to allow one computer (call it "Work") to act as a "terminal  server" to another computer (call it "Mobile"). For example, say you are at your "Work" computer composing a contract, keeping up with appointments, building a spreadsheet, sending and reading e-mails, playing Internet Sudoku (hey, just during lunch). So, anyway, quitting time comes, you head home, or maybe you have a conference in California... You have "Mobile" with you, right? So, if you did your planning and turned on all the right switches on the "Work" PC, you just turn on "Mobile," activate the "Remote Desktop," and sit down as if you were sitting at the "Work" PC. Now, not everything will work flawlessly. Anything requiring advanced graphics performance, such as movies, Google Earth, perhaps even music, will be very frustrating to use. Any moving graphics will be very jerky. But the more mundane stuff, like basic web surfing, e-mail composing, perhaps a spreadsheet, or text document composition, even basic drawing, will work fairly well if you have a good connection.
The process works by transmitting the display information from the "Work" computer over the available connection to the "Mobile" computer, and transmitting the commands, such as keyboarding and mouse commands, from the “Mobile” computer back to the “Work” computer. If the connection is fast enough, the process has very acceptable performance for much routine work.

Note that for this process to work over a long-distance connection, the computers must have holes poked in their protection, either the firewall and/or the router, so that there are significant security concerns. I am not an expert on this issue, but I would not try this without consulting such an expert, or maybe several of them. On the other hand, when you are working with both computers on the same local area network, the risks seem fairly small. The two computers are configured to connect only to each other, and since on the LAN they are behind a router, this should provide sufficient protection (unless there are malicious operators within the LAN space, as is potentially the case in a public Internet  access environment (libraries, Internet cafés...)

So, picture it now. There you are with your new machine, no data, possibly unfamiliar web browser, no real word processor, no graphic tools... But, if you can just get connected to your LAN, you can keep working as if at your old comfortable machine, and between normal tasks, work at a comfortable pace setting up your new machine.

So, you may say, what is involved in setting up this Remote Desktop? It is not too bad. It may work better if you have both machines side by side, directly connected. This will allow you to avoid any router-introduced problems until you have gotten through the initial setup. With both machines running wireless, especially encrypted wireless such as WPA and even WEP, the Remote Desktop did not work for me. I was unable to get any recognition that there was another machine ready to do remote desktop. I used a crossover Ethernet cable on the two computers.  Bingo!

On the XP (old) machine, you simply right- click on My Computer, then Properties, and select the Remote tab. Then you select "Allow users to connect remotely..." and "Select Remote Users.”

A side note here: I would not attempt this without keeping both computers password protected, and using only those password-protected accounts.

In the window to "Select Remote Users," enter the UserIDs of the people who will be allowed to connect remotely to this computer.

Well, it was getting a little cluttered around my easy chair, and I had to move one of the computers. The Vista machine seemed to work well connecting to the Internet, and to the rest of my LAN, so I decided to go for it—I moved my old reliable XP workhorse to the basement and plugged it into the router. When plugged in, the router gave the old machine a new IP address, so I had to go through another little dance to get the new machine to see it.

On the Vista machine (I am using "home basic," so I guess it is in all versions), you then must find the program "Remote Desktop Connection." Mine was located in Start->allprograms->accessories. Then, up comes a little window like this.

After I clicked on Options, the window expanded. I entered the IP address of the Vista computer (found using the command line tool “IPCONFIG” on that machine). The tabs have lots of check boxes to tune the connection, but I was lucky. The connection was not bad using the default connections. Try those first, and tweak carefully as necessary.
This is not something I would want to use as a permanent solution. It can be a little jerky and blotchy for many graphics. But if you are one of the unlucky ones for whom Vista is a frustration of considerable magnitude, it can let you get some work done while learning the ropes. Good luck with Vista!  (You may need it.)