When you approve the invasion, that person can take control of your PC remotely (or, at your option, just look without touching) via the GoToMyPC Web site. Actually, for those situations, GoToMyPC's guest-invitation feature is even more useful: as you sit at home, you can send an e-mail invitation to somebody who's never used GoToMyPC before.
You can further capitalize on the screen-sharing effect by using GoToMyPC's built-in chat-room software and sketch-pad software, which can be handy when a guru far away is trying to help troubleshoot your ''home'' machine. (''I'll do the nouns, you do the verbs.'') For example, you (on the road) and your pal (at the office) can type simultaneously, collaborating on the same document.
Even so, co-pilot control over one PC has its advantages.
If the effect freaks out the folks back home, never fear - the company says that a future upgrade will let you black out the screen of the PC being inhabited. Of course, you've got the reins, thousands of miles away. If there's anyone at home to glance at your machine, an even more bizarre phenomenon awaits, a sight right out of a high-tech Harry Potter novel: The cursor whirls about the screen, windows open and close, and words type themselves into documents - even though nobody's anywhere near the computer. Even so, slow access is often better than no access. If you're connected by standard modem, the delays are more severe if you've ever been on the phone with someone who's obviously trying to read e-mail while you're talking, you'll recognize the feeling. If both ends use a high-speed connection like a cable modem or D.S.L., there's only a hint of sluggishness you may feel as though you're back on the old PC you gave your in-laws in 1998.
You can open your folders and documents, edit them, print them, install or run programs, read and reply to your e-mail, copy files between your two computers, restart the remote PC, and so on, exactly as though you're seated in front of your main machine.
Then you witness something weird and wonderful: a window appears that shows you exactly what's on the screen of the PC at home. Then wait about 30 seconds as the Web site negotiates an extremely secure, encrypted connection with your computer back home. , type in two passwords, and then click on Connect.
You can just as easily dial into your home (or office) machine from a hotel's business center, a convention center, an airport's Internet cafe or a public library. Sure, you can use your own laptop, but this product lets you consider traveling laptop-free. But hooking back into your PC at the office got a lot easier last month with the opening of GoToMyPC, an ingenious Web site created by ExpertCity that lets you channel the spirit of your computer at home onto the screen of any Internet-connected machine in the world. Not even Microsoft sells software for rescuing dead batteries or caffeinated keys. Finally, there's winding up in some remote and inconvenient city and discovering that you need to consult a crucial file that's nonchalantly resting on your hard drive back home. Second, there's spilling coffee into your keyboard in flight extra credit if you're caught without a napkin and the seat-belt sign is illuminated. First, there's boarding the flight on which you hoped to complete an important memo, and realizing that your laptop was ''recharging'' all night from a dead outlet.
YOU can't call yourself a modern mobile professional until you've survived three rites of passage.