The Hindu : Business : Run your PC from a mobile phone

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 22, 2005

Business

Business

Run your PC from a mobile phone

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE, JAN. 21. The twin worlds of the personal computer and the cellular phone have come together just a bit more this week. The Japanese electronics giant, Toshiba, has just announced the launch of the world's first software that allows one to remotely control a PC from a mobile phone.

The software — called "Ubiquitous Viewer'' — enables a user to access a Windows-based PC remotely from the phone, then open, read and modify all standard MS Office files like "Word'' documents, "Excel'' spreadsheets and "Powerpoint'' presentations as well as access e-mails or the Internet browser of the PC.

In effect it offers real time access and use of one's desktop PC from any where in the world. It also facilitates high speed and secure transfer of data between the PC and the mobile, using special data compression technology and the industry-standard Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption algorithm.

While the facility will have obvious attraction for the business world, it will also enable lay PC owners with a problem, to call up a service engineer who can then tweak the machine from another continent.

Toshiba says, the feature will first appear in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-type mobile phones in March and will gradually be extended to the rival Global Services Mobile (GSM) phones.

Unsaid in all this, is possibly the real breakthrough benefit for mobile phone owners: Why pay extra money for fancy Internet-enabled smart phones, when you can link up with your home or office PC from a standard phone (and the new software) to get the full PC and Internet functionality?

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