I don't know if this is a dream of yours, but being able to control any computer from anywhere in the world has pretty much always been a fantasy of sorts for me. (Yes, I have been called a geek from time to time.)

But seriously, it just doesn't seem right that in the age of Blackberries and iPhones, "netbooks" and MacBook Airs, that people should be tied down to a cubicle or a desktop for any reason whatsoever, outside of perhaps a demanding and irrational slavedriver of a boss.

I know that some people -- maybe more than some people -- suffer from being forced to work under that kind of leader, but assuming you don't, there really isn't any reason why we shouldn't be able to do our computing anywhere and at any time we choose. And this is exactly what remote PC access software is all about.

I have a very personal experience with this stuff, because it actually saved my bacon just a few years ago. If you haven't heard this story before, let me just tell it to you quickly so you know where I'm coming from.

But first, just a note -- I'm going to get to some resources where you can find out about the very best remote access software in just a second. So make sure you stay tuned. I promise you'll know everything you need to in order to choose the package that's right for you five minutes from now.

Now, back to the story. I'm lucky enough to be one of those people who gets to work from home. However, I'm not lucky enough to be one of those people who gets to work from home and live in a McMansion.

My home office is basically a spare bedroom that was doomed to disappear once my second child was born and it was converted into a nursery/office. (About 90% nursery and 10% office in reality.)

So what was going to happen was that I was going to lose access to my main computer for large periods of the day and night, meaning that I'd have to get my work done in between a newborn baby's nap and sleep schedule.

If there are any parents out there, you know that this window of opportunity is pretty small to say the least. So what I needed, obviously, was a solution that would allow me to access that computer that I needed, but to do so without actually having to be in that room.

Sound familiar? Your situation may be similar to mine, or maybe you want to access your office PC from home, or your home PC from your office, or just any old PC from anywhere you happen to be. Whatever you're going to use it for exactly, the way these things work remains the same.

You basically install a small client on the "host" computer, and then use a special piece of software and an Internet connection to literally control that host computer remotely. If you get the right software, it works like a charm.

I told you earlier that this kind of set up saved my bacon. And I was not kidding. This was a point in my life when I needed to put an enormous amount of time into work. If it hadn't been for the remote access software that I used, I don't know how it would've worked out.