If you have an office but you travel a lot, then you may have two computers – a desktop model and a laptop. Unfortunately, when shifting between the two, you sometimes forget to transfer important files, and you also forget to back them up on a portable drive. If this happens to you, don’t worry. You can access files from your computer at home through terminal services, or what is now known as remote desktop services, over a network. To run remote desktop services, the main computer must be running Windows XP Professional while the remote computer’s operating system should be at least Windows 95, and both must be connected to the Internet using a VPN connection.

To avail of these services, each device or user needs a terminal services license, or remote desktop services client access licenses (RDS CALs) as they are now called, to connect to a Remote Desktop Session Host server. An RDS CAL is issued by a license server when the client logs in to the RD Session Host server. Clients have a grace period during which they don’t need an RDS CAL; after the period expires, however, they must purchase and install RDS CALs for each user or device.

he length of the grace period depends on the operating system. Windows 2008 and 2003 have grace periods of 120 days while Windows 2000 has a grace period of only 90 days. The number of days before the grace period expires appears by default on the bottom corner of the desktop the local administrator is using.