A Network Attached Windows Box?

Richard Weidmann asks: "Can a Windows box be attached to a local network as freely available resource? I use Mac OS X and Linux but sometimes it is simply convenient to have a Windows computer to do some specific task or run some specific program. I would like to run my Windows computer headless in the network in such a fashion that I can access it easily from the other computers such that: VLC is started, so I see the Windows desktop; the home directory of my current machine is mounted on the Windows box; and my local optical drive can be read from the Windows machine. Has anybody seen such a setup or project?"

Comments

Re:Terminal Services

[DA-MAN]

Or you can get a Windows XP machine, and buy WinConnect Server XP. It allows you to have up to 21 Terminal Server connections on Windows XP.

It works really well. I'd also suggest using rdesktop on Linux and the Windows Remote Desktop Client on the Mac.

Remote Desktop is much better than VNC, especially when used over the internet because VNC is not encrypted at all. Remote Desktop includes built in 128 bit encryption.