Stories about: Traveling Software

The "m-life" of a mobile, 21st-century, tech-savvy person may be a new buzzphrase, but Mark Eppley has been living mobile for years. Founder and chief executive of what was initially Traveling Software, he renamed the company LapLink Inc. after its leading product, a remote-control-and-access utility. Newer is PCsync, strictly a file transfer program, also available in a version for PDAs. PCWorld.com caught Eppley on the road and online for a conversation about how he has seen portable computing change, and what he expects next.

Laplink.com Inc. is putting its file transfer and synchronization expertise to new use, teaming with Web sites that want to offer speedier and more flexible file access and management.

This remote access and control application excels at cross-platform work, but it still has some flaws.

Managing servers used to be a time-consuming and costly affair. Remote-control solutions made it easier to maintain the servers, but they brought up some new concerns. Software solutions are simple to install and are inexpensive, but they use precious server clock cycles by loading the server with another process to service. If this is unattractive to you, hardware-based products for remote control offer another option.

The last year has been tumultuous for the modem market, with bundled packages causing new levels of complacency in the retail modem market. However, the rise in the Web's multimedia content is predicted to have a big effect on the overall consumption of modems, with fanatical audiophiles and gamers thirsting for tools to access Internet downloads.

New versions of LapLink.com's LapLink and Symantec's pcAnywhere make the products close competitors in terms of performing remote control and transferring files. The products, from Bothell, Washington-based LapLink.com (formerly Traveling Software) and Santa Monica, California-based Symantec, are useful for setting up a new computer or grabbing information from your office machine when on the road or at home.