IT Support

It is said there are 3 things that are important in IT, Backups, Backups and Backups. Before you do anything, please read the link titled "Backups". After you read that you may indulge yourself in free knowledge about IT for home, small and medium business.

Terminal services

What is it? Sort of a virtual PC. It allows you access to a server, where you can then either redirect to a PC or run applications such as MS Office or anything else, without actually having to have a PC.

Advantages
For most Small or Medium size businesses, none. Remote access to your work IT systems can be an advantage. Many enterprise size companies use Terminal Services for remote access as it is reasonably easy to setup and doesn't require a VPN. If you have a pile of old PC's, don't want to upgrade them all and they won't run the applications you need, you can setup a Terminal Server and let everyone just connect to the server and run Windows XP actually on the server, but it appears on their PC's as if they are running it there. Generally this is not a price competitive option by the time you take in the cost of setting it up and support, but it can be done and depends on how the applications themselves are licensed, as some are licensed on the number of people actually using them at any one time.

For larger organisations, Citrix XenApp can be a viable option. This is like Terminal Services on steroids, but you have to pay extra for it and in most cases, it's not worth it.