Why I moved to a Virtual PC

Returning to my car to find my side window smashed and my bag with my laptop in it stolen sent me into a panic. I rushed back to my office to set about changing every system password we had and 4 hours later having secured everything I could think of I was still in a panic.

That was 2 years ago and fast forward to 3 weeks ago my work PC was starting to show signs of age and an upgrade looking essential.

So what have these two issues got in common.

Well instead of running out and buying a new PC we spun up a new hosted server and built a windows PC onto one of our virtual machines.

Totally secure my new PC can't be stolen, I don't have to worry about memory or upgrades or hard drive space and best of all it is always available, it doesn't need to be booted up and all my files, programs and documents are right where I left them, open and waiting for me to continue to work on them next time I log in.

I'll be honest, I am kicking myself that I didn't do this year's earlier.

My new PC runs lightning fast with 4Gb of ram (although I could go up to 32Gb if I wanted) it's running on the latest windows software and I've added office pro and all my usual programs.

I have a 500Gb hard drive (I could add more) and have copied over all my files from my ex PC which is now simply acting as a slave.

My new PC has 1Gbs of internet bandwidth so to say it is fast is an understatement - where I used to start downloads and go to make a cup of coffee I now blink and miss the finished message!

More impressive is I can use my PC from anywhere on any device. I am writing this piece using my mobile phone, but I can connect and work using my home PC, my TV, my tablet, my laptop or just about any third party machine with an internet connection.

Because my virtual PC is doing all the grunt work nothing I use needs to be that powerful and in fact we are now building cloud PC'S for all our staff and supplying low cost laptops as slaves.

The solution is way more secure than anything else I have ever used and if a user leaves the company or loses their laptop they simply change the login password to the virtual PC.

My entire PC is backed up every night (could be more often) and if my PC does fail for any reason I can simply restore it, even to an alternative server.

My server is hosted at one of Europe's most secure and robust hosting centers with triple power and internet fail-over and a guaranteed 99.8% up-time and if I lose power or internet at home or where I am working from, I simply use my mobile connection.

Amazing as all this is I was even more stunned to find my virtual PC mimic's my slave. My slave PC has two monitors and my virtual PC instantly recognised this and allowed me to use both, as well as the attached printer, scanner, remote hard drive and data dongle.

I can't tell you how delighted I am with my new PC, it's amazing!!!

Want one of your own - learn more...