Back to my Mac is perhaps one of the most love it/hate it features of Leopard. When it works, it’s pretty darn snazzy—unfortunately, that seems to be only a small percentage of the time. Of course, the major issue for many when it comes to Back to my Mac is that you need a .Mac account for it to work. So what about all those Mac users who haven’t ponied up $100 a year to Cupertino?
They’re by no means left out in the cold, as Adam Pash at Lifehacker points out. He’s put together a post detailing how you can get the same functionality as Back to my Mac for just a fraction of the price (where fraction = 0). Adam’s solution relies on features already built into Leopard—namely, screen sharing and an FTP server (or AFP server)—to give you remote screen control and file access from anywhere in the world.
It’s a pretty easy little tutorial to follow, so if you’ve been looking for a way to get at your home computer’s files when you’re out and about on the road, it’s definitely worth a look-see.
CouchPocket.com also has a link to an alternative BTMM function using AIM. This solutions looks great too!
http://couchpocket.com/?p=117
I read the article, and it was quite good, however there was no discussion of the security implications of opening well known ports through the firewall and using passwords with no encryption.
I think the benefit of "Back to My Mac" is that it is done in a more secure way. At least to my non-expert knowledge it looks more secure.
I've been doing that since I got my first Mac (using VineServer on Tiger - the built in VNC server didn't quite have all the features I wanted).
But I didn't, and don't, do it quite like that. Instead I open up ssh in my router and tunnel through. I wouldn't open port 5900 to the world.