Five Best Remote Desktop Tools

Click to viewWhether you want quick access to your home computer from anywhere in the world or you're the go-to IT person for your friends and family, remote desktop applications are a godsend. Even better: They're easier than ever to set up. With the right remote desktop tool, you can access your home computer as though you're sitting right in front of it— no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite remote desktop tools, and today we're back with the top five answers. Keep reading for a closer look at each solution, then cast your vote for the remote desktop solution you like best.

LogMeIn (Windows/Mac)

LogMeIn was one of the first popular remote desktop solutions aimed squarely at consumers, offering a quick, no-hassle set up to remotely control your computer from the comfort of any web browser. LogMeIn comes in a variety of flavors, but the two that are designed to satisfy your remote desktop needs are LogMeIn Pro and LogMeIn Free. A Pro account adds more features to the service, including drag-and-drop file transfer, file sync, and meeting tools. LogMeIn Pro isn't exactly cheap, at $13/month or $70/year, and while a Pro account offers more features than a free account, many users are still perfectly happy with LogMeIn Free.

TightVNC (Windows/Linux)

TightVNC is a cross-platform, open-source remote desktop application. With TightVNC, you need to set up a VNC server on the computer you wish to access remotely; you can then remotely access that computer from anywhere else with any VNC viewer. We've already detailed how to set up TightVNC on your home computer, and if you'd prefer controlling TightVNC from a web browser to carrying a VNC client with you, you can also control TightVNC from the web.

TeamViewer (Windows/Mac)

TeamViewer—like LogMeIn—offers free and paid accounts for remote controlling any PC. Unlike LogMeIn, TeamViewer is free for all non-commercial users. It doesn't offer browser-based remote control, instead using small utilities to connect between computers. TeamViewer is even available as a portable application you can carry around on your thumb drive. Whether you want to set up personal remote computing or you're pull frequent tech support duty, TeamViewer has a lot to offer.

Windows Remote Desktop Connection (Windows)

Windows Remote Desktop—the default remote desktop app that comes bundled with Windows—is still more than enough for most Windows users looking for full-featured remote desktop control. If you've never happened upon the Remote Desktop Connection application buried in the Accessories folder of your Start menu, now might be a good time to try it out. Just be sure you've enabled remote desktop access.

UltraVNC (Windows)

UltraVNC is an open-source, Windows-only remote desktop application. UltraVNC supports a hefty feature set, including text chat, file transfer support, and support for optional plug-ins. Although UltraVNC only runs on Windows, you can still access your computer from any operating system using your web browser.

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Now that you've seen the best, it's time to vote for your favorite:

Which Is the Best Remote Desktop Tool? (Poll Closed)

UltraVNC 16% (1238 votes)

Windows Remote Desktop Connection 24% (1918 votes)

TeamViewer 9% (692 votes)

TightVNC 14% (1154 votes)

LogMeIn 27% (2120 votes)

Other 11% (837 votes)

This week's honorable mentions go out toCrossLoop and mRemote. Whether or not your beloved remote desktop app made the top five, let's hear more about it in the comments.

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Company 401(k) Plans - The Dirty Secret

By Bruno J. Navarro | CNBC – Fri, Nov 23, 2012 2:26 PM EST

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One of the basics of retirement planning - contributing to a tax-deferred 401(k) plan - could come with a serious downside, "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer said Wednesday.

"However, as much as I like the tax-favored status of 401(k) plans and IRAs, I need to tell you something heretical, something almost nobody else will come out and say: Most company 401(k) plans stink," he said.

"They have high management fees and administrative costs that eat into your returns, and worst of all, they typically offer you lousy choices for your investments and not nearly enough control over them," Cramer added. "The 401(k) business is a racket for the managers who get to charge you these fees.

"Sometimes it feels like the whole 401(k) system was set up to benefit the financial services industry, not you. And given the way Washington works I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually the case."

Nevertheless, Cramer added, contributing to a 401(k) is still too good to pass up for its tax-blessed nature.

"Plus, many employers will match your 401(k) contributions, and I'm a big believer in not turning down free money," he said.

Cramer suggested funding a 401(k) until the company match limit is reached, and then stopping.

After that, he said, "the rest of your retirement investing should happen in your IRA until you hit the upper limit on what you're allowed to contribute in a given year."

The reason?

IRAs provide much more freedom.

Cramer suggested picking high-yielding dividend stocks that provide protection and generate income.

"But there are a couple of wrinkles that make investing in an IRA different from investing in a regular account," he added.

Cramer suggests being wary of master limited partnerships in an IRA because they're already tax-advantaged.

Their distributions are considered a return of capital, and an arcane tax rule could mean losing tax benefits by owning too many MLPs.

"The goal here is to be able to reinvest your dividends and let them compound year after year after year without paying any taxes until you withdraw your money at the very end, a terrific recipe for producing huge long-term returns."

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Men and Women Can't be 'Just Friends'

By Adrian F. Ward | Scientific American – 12 hrs ago

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Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.

New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment.

In order to investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab.  Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for the other throughout their relationship.  In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.

The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistentlyunderestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.

Men were also more willing to act on this mistakenly perceived mutual attraction. Both men and women were equally attracted to romantically involved opposite-sex friends and those who were single; “hot” friends were hot and “not” friends were not, regardless of their relationship status.  However, men and women differed in the extent to which they saw attached friends as potential romantic partners.  Although men were equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else.

These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.” What makes these results particularly interesting is that they were found within particularfriendships (remember, each participant was only asked about the specific, platonic, friend with whom they entered the lab). This is not just a bit of confirmation for stereotypes about sex-hungry males and naïve females; it is direct proof that two people can experience the exact same relationship in radically different ways. Men seem to see myriad opportunities for romance in their supposedly platonic opposite-sex friendships. The women in these friendships, however, seem to have a completely different orientation—one that is actually platonic.

To the outside observer, it seems clear that these vastly different views about the potential for romance in opposite-sex friendships could cause serious complications—and people within opposite-sex relationships agree. In a follow-up study, 249 adults (many of whom were married) were asked to list the positive and negative aspects of being friends with a specific member of the opposite sex. Variables related to romantic attraction (e.g., “our relationship could lead to romantic feelings”) were five times more likely to be listed as negative aspects of the friendship than as positive ones. However, the differences between men and women appeared here as well. Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, and this discrepancy increased as men aged—males on the younger end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same.

Taken together, these studies suggest that men and women have vastly different views of what it means to be “just friends”—and that these differing views have the potential to lead to trouble. Although women seem to be genuine in their belief that opposite-sex friendships are platonic, men seem unable to turn off their desire for something more. And even though both genders agree overall that attraction between platonic friends is more negative than positive, males are less likely than females to hold this view.

So, can men and women be “just friends?” If we all thought like women, almost certainly.  But if we all thought like men, we’d probably be facing a serious overpopulation crisis.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.

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IRS raises 401(k) contribution limit to $17,500

By Blake Ellis | CNNMoney.com – Thu, Oct 18, 2012 4:37 PM EDT

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Starting next year, employees will be able to stash an extra $500 per year in their 401(k)s, tax-free.

The tax-free contribution limit for retirement plans will increase to $17,500 for 2013, up from $17,000 this year, the IRS announced Thursday.

That's the second year in a row the IRS has boosted the contribution limit as a result of rising inflation. The limit rose by $500 last year as well.

However, the catch-up contribution limit, which is the additional amount of tax-free money employees over 50 can contribute to their retirement plans -- on top of the $17,500 that any employee can contribute -- remains unchanged at $5,500.

Along with contributions to retirement plans, which include 401(k)s, 403(b)s, most 457 plans and the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan, the agency said it will increase more than two dozen tax benefits as well.

Among them, taxpayers will be able to gift as much as $14,000 tax-free in 2013, up from $13,000.

Also, if you're a U.S. citizen living abroad, the amount of foreign earnings you can exclude from your taxable income will rise from $95,100 to $97,600.

Rising inflation also prompted the Social Security Administration to announce earlier this week that Social Security recipients will be given a 1.7% boost to their monthly benefits next year.

College Savers Deserve Better

By David Falkof | Morningstar – Thu, Oct 18, 2012 7:00 AM EDT

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When making a big decision--buying a car, sending a child to school, seeking medical treatment--we all require some basic information in order to make a sound choice. Would you buy a car without knowing the make and price? Would you send your child to school without knowing her teacher's name? Would you receive medical treatment without knowing what it was for?

College savers need the same kinds of details when picking a 529 plan, yet often the information either isn't provided or takes too much digging to find. A new Morningstar study of 529 plans' disclosure found that the typical 529 plan website and plan document provide only high-level descriptions of the investment options. Basic information--including the name and tenure of the portfolio managers running the 529 investment options, and details about the most recent portfolios--isn't required disclosure for 529 plans, even though 529 plans collectively invest more than $162 billion of college savers' capital.

Morningstar privately collects data from 529 plans each month, including detailed information on the plans' investment options, performance, and fees, but such reporting is largely voluntary. Sometimes plans fail to routinely provide monthly returns or total assets under management. That's why Morningstar publicly advocated for better disclosure last year in a letter to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) and continues to believe good transparency is necessary for college savers to accurately compare and monitor 529 plan investments.

As part of our annual research into 529 plans, Morningstar's fund analysts compiled a list of information we'd like to see each plan disclose so that we can properly evaluate their investments and determine which are most likely to help college savers reach their goals. We looked through each plan's website and its program document (the 529 plan's version of a prospectus) to see what data was available.

What Investors Need to Know: Static Options
Specifically, for the plans' static options, we want to know how much the option costs, who manages the portfolio and for how long have they been at it, what the investment strategy is, what the portfolio owns, and what the performance record is. Some static options have multiple underlying investments, so we look at information on the option as a whole as well as for each underlying component.

The attached checklists (Table 1a and Table 1b) compiled in July and August, show which plans disclose these important pieces of information for static options. Not one 529 plan meets all the criteria.

To be sure, some plan websites come close. Wisconsin's EdVest College Savings Plan serves as a good example of how to link information about underlying investments to the static options. More commonly, though, plans merely tell the investor which mutual fund a static option owns but offer no more information. Louisiana Start Saving for College, for instance, provides step-by-step instructions on how to look up the underlying funds not on its own website, but Vanguard's.

In Table 1b, the six notably sparse columns refer to portfolio and manager data that Morningstar fund analysts regularly use to evaluate a fund's risk exposures and to monitor the stability of the management team. For stock fund portfolios, we use market-cap and sector weightings to establish whether an investment is primarily exposed to big or small companies, or firms in a specific sector of the economy, like health care, technology, or energy. This information helps us anticipate how an investment will perform and identify potential risks.

With bond portfolios, we look at an investments' credit-quality and interest-rate exposures to broadly understand how it will perform in different market environments. For example, a portfolio with low credit quality will usually outperform in bull markets, when investors are less risk-averse, but it could post steep losses in a downturn.

We look to see who manages the investment and how experienced they are. This information is critical for monitoring the stability of the management team and the relevance of the performance history.

What Investors Need To Know: Age-Based Options
Morningstar's transparency audit showed that few 529 plans provide this valuable information. As professional investment researchers, we can dig up this information by cross-referencing 529 investments with data on the plan's ultimate mutual fund holdings, but college savers would be much better served if this portfolio and manager information were easily accessible.

The age-based options call for an even greater standard of disclosure. These options hold the majority of 529 assets and have a similar structure to the popular target-date mutual funds found in retirement savings plans. Age-based options' asset allocation becomes more cautious over time, moving college savers' assets from primarily stocks when the beneficiary is young to primarily bonds and cash as college enrollment nears. For an age-based option, we'd like to know how much it costs and who's managing the portfolio, but we'd also like a description of the asset allocation strategy, the strategies of the underlying holdings, and the performance record.

In this second set of checklists (Table 2a and Table 2b), we show which plans met our criteria for the age-based options. Again, none of the 529 plans receive checks across the board, and there is a wide range in quality of the information available. On the positive end, the Illinois Bright Directions website provides useful portfolio and performance data related to the age-based option as a whole and the underlying investments. Meanwhile, the Nebraska State Farm College Savings Plan's website met none of the criteria.

While many plans receive check marks in the columns related to fees and performance (Table 2a) and glide path and portfolio (Table 2b), the Upromise-managed plans are missing several key disclosures. The many direct-sold Upromise plans generally feature the same Vanguard investment options, and all of them suffer from the same poor disclosure for the age-based options. Whereas rival plans disclose the performance and holdings of their age-based options, the websites for the Upromise plans provide no details beyond the broad asset allocations, such as at New York's 529 College Savings Program. Instead, investors need to dig into the plan documents and other parts of the website to find this information.

Even the Gold Medalists Can Improve
The disclosure disparity between mutual funds and 529 plans is even apparent at two of Morningstar's Gold-rated plans: T. Rowe Price College Savings Plan and The Vanguard 529 College Savings Plan. These two firms also offer target-date retirement mutual funds and, for the most part, the people overseeing the target-date funds are the same as those overseeing the 529 plans' age-based options. Despite the similarities in structure and people running the investments, the firms' 529 plan websites are substantially less informative than their target-date websites.

The T. Rowe Price mutual fund website, for instance, includes abundant detail about the portfolio construction, tactical shifts, and performance of the target-date funds. The page for T. Rowe Price Retirement 2025 provides commentary on the fund's performance and allows investors to look at the portfolios of the underlying funds. But on T. Rowe's 529 plan website, the portfolio detail is limited to the name and allocation of the underlying funds.

Similar discrepancies show up on Vanguard's website. The firm's mutual fund website includes a helpful video explaining the target-date funds and provides clear disclosure of the underlying funds. On Vanguard's 529 website, though, the portfolio information for the age-based options is limited to broad asset allocations, such as stocks and bonds.

Transparency Matters
Morningstar maintains that more-informed investors make better investment decisions, but most 529 plans aren't providing the basics that college savers need to make informed choices. Just as mutual fund investors can get access to the appropriate data to monitor and evaluate a fund, college savers deserve an equally high standard of transparency. Importantly, the data should be timely and easily accessible. Examples of good disclosure exist in both the 529 plan and mutual fund industry, so plans with poor transparency should emulate the disclosures of their peers.

Fund Research intern Jordan Einhorn compiled the checklists attached to this article. This study would not have been possible without her tireless efforts.

I Got a New Job -- 401(k) or Roth IRA?

This week Farnoosh answers your questions about deciding between a 401(k) and a Roth IRA, paying one credit-card bill with another credit card and "hard inquiries."

By Farnoosh Torabi | Yahoo! Finance – Thu, Oct 18, 2012 4:17 PM EDT

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Dariela asks: I have a question regarding my 401(k) that I will be starting in a month at my work. I am 24 years old, no kids, not married. What is a good percentage to put towards it, or should I get a Roth IRA instead?

Happy – and so impressed -- to know you’re starting to plant seeds for retirement at your age.

My advice is, first and foremost, take full advantage of your company’s 401(k) matching policy. If your employer contributes 50 cents for every $1 you contribute, up to, say, 6% of your salary, then contribute at least 6%. Why leave free money on the table?

While 6% is a decent start (and, really, it’s 9% with the match) – it isn’t great. “It may not be enough to get you to the level of savings you need to help assure a comfortable retirement,” says Nevin Adams, co-director of the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Center for Research on Retirement Income.  Ultimately, a 10% to 15% distribution each year towards retirement savings is ideal. You won’t know for sure until you run the numbers and project what you anticipate needing in retirement – based on your goals, when you plan to retire and future anticipated expenses -- with the help of online calculators at choosetosave.org and the AARP website. From there, you can determine how much you should try to be saving annually to meet that precious figure, which, by the way, isn’t a hard and fast figure and may change over time. 

As for where to put that additional savings, the choice between a 401(k) and a Roth IRA depends on your personal tax situation now and in the future. Unlike a 401(k), which allows you to defer paying taxes until you begin making withdrawals, the benefit of a Roth IRA is that you pay taxes today at your current rate, which is likely to be lower than, say, 40 years from now when you’re nearing retirement. Many financial experts are championing the benefits tax diversification in long-term savings – especially for younger workers, who are more likely be paying a lower tax rate now than they will later, says Adams.  In short, if you think you’ll pay higher taxes in retirement, you may want to put some of that savings in a Roth and minimize Uncle Sam’s bite.
 
From Facebook: It's time to start borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Can I make a credit-card payment with one card to pay for another, and are there typically additional charges for doing so? 

What you can do is transfer the balance from one card to another to take advantage of another card’s more favorable terms. You may be tempted to do so if you’re strapped for cash and you find a card with a lower interest rate or 0% introductory rate offer. But to warn you, there are usually hefty fees associated with doing so, typically 2% to 5% of the transferred balance.  So if you’re transferring $1,000, that’s up to $50 in fees. “These fees can impact or even potentially offset the savings in interest charges depending on the amount of the transfer, length of the promotional rate on the new card and the interest rate differential between the old and new card,” says Ben Woolsey ofCreditCards.com.

In my experience helping families and individuals with credit-card debt, transferring a balance often becomes a way to just manage the debt, rather than erase the debt. As Gerri Detweiler of Credit.comsays, “Don’t just take care of the payment. Take care of the debt.”  If you really want to nip it in the bud, consider working with a credit counseling agency, such as The National Foundation for Credit Counseling or Money Management International, that can help you establish an effective repayment plan. 

Richard asks: I started using credit cards four years ago. Recently I requested to increase my credit limit for my oldest credit card. When that happened, I received an email about a hard inquiry. I've never received a hard inquiry before and doing a little research on my own, found out it is bad. Why is this bad and how do I turn this bad to good?

When applying for new credit, either a loan or credit card, the lender will typically request to access your credit history. The act of doing so is called a “hard inquiry” and it’s often looked down upon as far as your credit score’s concerned. Why? The perception is that when you’re applying for new credit – even if it’s just an extension of existing credit – it signals that you may be in a financial bind or could have trouble paying your bills. I know – it doesn’t exactly give you the benefit of the debt. But if it does end up dinging your score, it won’t cost more than five points. Multiple hard inquiries in a short time frame – say, when you’re applying for various store cards at the mall one weekend – could do more damage.  Hard inquiries stay on your credit report for no more than 24 months, and after the first year don’t impact your score. 

And while we’re on the topic, the other type of credit inquiry is a “soft inquiry,” associated more with periodic checks, like when you or your bank reviews your credit report. Soft inquires don't affect your score.