Testing Grounds: Control a Windows Machine Using Remote Desktop

Ever find yourself sitting at your mac, needing to connect to a windows machine and run the Remote Desktop? Do you think that Windows and Mac hate each other so much, that it is hopeless to assume that you can use Remote Desktop Connection through a Macintosh? Well think again, because Microsoft has created Remote Desktop Connection for mac.

First things first, this has been out for a while. For those of you who don't know much about RDC (Remote Desktop Connection), it has traditionally been a program that allows windows users to remotely login to another windows machine. Features include cutting/copying from one machine and pasting into the other, to printing a document on another machine that is connected to a printer. It comes in handy, much more efficient than emailing a file to yourself, using a thumbdrive to transfer a file, or having a network attached storage device (NAS). This comes in handy when it comes to the file systems of the two operating systems, while windows refuses to even acknowledge the OSX file system, OSX will for the most part recognize the NTFS file system and read from it, but will not write to it.

Without further ado, here is where you may download RDC for Macintosh:

Remote Desktop

The URL is huge, but if you need to paste it into your browser it is:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=
/mac/download/misc/rdc_update_103.xml&secid=80&ssid=10&
flgnosysreq=True

Now here is a photo odyssey of what it takes to use this software. Keep in mind that this setup is a mac using RDC to connect to a Windows 2003 Server.