VNC is a very popular remote desktop software that can be used to view a remote system’s desktop. It’s main limitation is that it can only be used to view one system at a time. VNC Thumbnail Viewer has been created to overcome this limitation. It is a remote desktop software that will display a realtime thumbnail image of remote computers on a server system. The software program comes with two components: A server program that has to be installed on all remote computer systems as this program sends screenshots of the desktop over the network. The viewer component can be run to display the desktops of the remote computer systems that send the desktop screenshots over the network.

The installation of VNC Thumbnail Viewer is outlined below:

• Start VNC Server on all remote computer systems. You also need to ensure that a VNC client like UltraVNC or TightVNC.
• Start VNC Thumbnail Viewer on another computer system.
• Connect it to the remote computer systems by entering their IP or Hostname, port number and server password. The window will automatically scale depending on the number of connected vnc servers
• A double-click will will open that server in a new window giving the admin control of the keyboard and mouse

The VNC Thumbnail Viewer application is available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

We have to rely on third party products to add Remote Desktop functionality to Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium. The software that we are going to use is called TightVNC. It takes up about two megabytes of disk space on your system and requires some basic configuration to work.

The current user properties can be edited during the installation of the program. You should supply a secure password, set a port or port range that should be used and edit the other options that are visible in the configuration menu. I would advise to remove the option to disable remote keyboard and pointer (view-mode only).

Congratulations you have added remote desktop support to Windows Vista Home Basic and Premium.