Does anyone have any experience with remote desktop apps?

I help a friend of mine with her computer frequently (she's not too computer savvy and asks for help alot) and rather than going over to her house every few days I'm looking into using a remote desktop connection so I can access her computer from my own. We both have XP Home, so from what I understand the remote desktop connection that XP comes with is only the client side. I've heard about UltraVNC, but I want to ask here before I decide on anything.

You just want to spy on her webcam, perv.

Not really, it's my best friend's/roommate's mom, and I'm tired of going over every few days to help her update cartographer and questhelper for WoW even though I've showed her how many times, besides that she doesn't have a webcam.

RealVNC isn't bad.

What's the main differences between realvnc and ultravnc? I dont want to pay for realvnc if ultravnc will do what I need for free. It seems they do mainly the same thing, with Realvnc being more professional looking.

TightVNC is pretty nice

Can you use the remote assistance tool from XP home? It's designed for exactly what you want to do.

Crossloop or LogMeIn if you're going to need to access her system routinely.

XP Home does have remote assistance.

Also, I highly recommend UltraVNC anyway, it works great for my family >.>

It's possible to hack Remote Desktop into XP Home but the original blog with the instructions is gone.

Remote Assistance is a highly nerfed Remote Desktop. The user at the computer has to explicitly accept the connection.

VNC is a good alternative.

I recommend UltraVNC. There is also MetaVNC which has a seamless desktop mode just like VirtualBox does for VMs but it has less features than UltraVNC.

Teamviewer is hands down the best application you can use.

Programs like RealVNC and TinyVNC are handicapped by routers and the likes, Teamviewer is simple and connects to anything you set it up on.

LogMeIn is pretty awesome