Since Apple switched over to Intel chips the options for running Windows on your Mac have increased substantially. You can either dual boot your machine and run Windows natively or punch your way through OS X to the hardware underneath with virtualisation software such as Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
However, sometimes you might want to run Windows applications at full speed and still have access to your OS X applications. Microsoft's updated Remote Desktop Client allows you to interact with a Windows-based machine from your Mac, without sacrificing desk space to another monitor, keyboard and mouse.
You can connect to any machine running a version of Windows that supports Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services, which basically covers Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, XP Pro and Server 2003. You need to enable remote desktop connections on the machine you want to access and then just enter its network name or IP address. You can connect to machines on your local network or over the Internet, providing they have a static IP address or you're using a dynamic DNS service so you can find its address.
The biggest improvement in RDC 2.0, aside from the fact it's been rewritten from scratch as a Universal Binary, is that it now supports multiple sessions - so you can log into more than one Windows box at the same time. The way it does this is slightly convoluted though. You can't, for example, just start the program twice and enter the relevant details for each machine. Instead, you have to save your connection details to a file for each machine and then launch each one from the Finder by double clicking. It works but it feels a little like you're jumping through hoops.
As it's a beta it's still a little buggy, although it only crashed after disconnecting from the server during testing and was fairly reliable in use.
Given that it's free to download, it's hard to criticise. It does what it promises and is a great way to access a Windows machine if you need it only for occasional tasks and don't have space for an extra monitor and peripherals.
Needs Mac OS X 10.4.9 + 128MB Ram + 13MB hard disk spaceAuthor: Will Head
Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta)