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lisaS
So, good problem, bad problem... I was fortunate enought to quite my job in march and go full time with photography. Business is rockin, and I have hired my first assistant and am leasing a natural light studio in down town. The down side, I know nothing about networking yada yada.

I still want to have my home based office with my external hardrives here and my assistant working out of of the studio. I dont want to sets of files going back and forth so I want her to access my 5 hard drives
1. clients to proof
2. Business harddrive
3. templates actiones
4. completed clients
6. Quickbooks customer manager and bookeeping

And I want my assitant to be able to access them and work off of them - raw files and all. I called the "geek squad" and they want over 1200.00 to set this up with a VPN. A

does anyone else do this, and have a good soution?

Thanks in advance.

Lisa
kaitlin
Well, I would try calling a local computer shop as opposed to geek squad - because geek squad is affiliated with a large corp, they have to jump through hoops to do things and the overhead is higher. A local place might be able to help you and it would be cheaper. If you have a community college or something nearby, you might be able to find a computer kid who would be willing to do it through the computer science dept.
lisaS
Thank you so much, I will look at both these options. I appreciate it. Wondering if anyone else there currently has a similar setup? TIA
Nick
As a computer guy, I don't think there is an inexpensive solution for you. Transfering raw files across a local wi-fi network is difficult enough; expecting someone to transfer raw files across the internet is just not going to happen without a huge broadband connection. Any internet connection you could get at your home or business (unless you're an Internet Service Provider) will simply not be fast enough to transfer files as large as camera raw files in a reasonable timeframe. There's a saying that applies here - "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

However, bookkeeping and other low-bandwidth applications can be worked with. This may also be a solution for working with raw files, but I wouldn't use it. There are several methods of remote access for Windows and Mac computers. I use RealVNC, but by itself it is not a secure solution. You definitely want to be sure that you're using a secure access method especially when working with your company financial data. Try this. It's called Hamachi. I haven't used it but know it's been around a while and you shouldn't have much problem finding information.

Unless you have a very compelling reason for staying at home I would recommend working from your studio and sitting near your assistant. I think most people would agree that working outside the home is generally more productive and working in the same room with your co-workers will boost productivity and communication.

As yet another solution, put all your external hard drives in the studio and let the assistant do the grunt work. You can spend most of the day at home then show up in the studio to make sure things are going well and do those things which you feel you can't turn over to an assistant.
Jeremy Jorgensen
I agree with what Nick said, both RealVNC and Hamachi are great pieces of software. I use them both. If all you need is access to files on the remote computer running Hamachi is probably all you will need. If you need to run applications on the remote computer you will need to set up RealVNC. You can set up RealVNC to only accept connections that come through your Hamachi network, this makes things a little more secure. If you have any questions on setting this up feel free to PM me.
RayH
I am a Full time Computer Spec. In our Location we Use Dameware for Remote access. Very Cheap We love it. If you Have a Static IP address to your Internet Provider. You Can do a Secure Data Share on your network and your user can connect from a Remote location. To do that you dont need to have any software if you are using Windows OS's. But you will have to add permissions to the file so not everyone can access that file. I can ramble on all day about networking . Just let me know if i can help in anyway.
JeffersonTodd
I agree with Nick that there is no cheap option for this if you're looking to actually transfer RAW files between the computers. Your best bet is to have all of the files at your studio for your assistant to work on and then to take an external hard drive for any large groups of files that you need to work on.

So are you on PC or Mac?
lisaS
I am PC, and I actually dont think I need them to access the raw files. I have changed the system so I will edit raw in lightroom and batch to jpeg and they will take it from there. Is there a reasonable option then?

thanks in advance
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