Remote desktop is one of the few parts of Windows that I’m really enthusiastic about.  It works better than X or even VNC over a slow connection, and it can remote sound and printers as well as Windows; there is a good client for the Mac and I believe for Linux as well.

When Microsoft added Remote Desktop to consumer editions of Windows, they crippled it so that only a single remote or local user could be logged into a machine at the same time, to ensure that they didn’t cannibalize the sales of Windows licenses

However, the underlying system has no such limit, and there’s a way to hack Windows to get around it.  Riccardo Ranerio reports in Windows XP Multiuser desktop on how to do this.    I haven’t tried it yet but it looks to be a simple operation. 

XP (and Media Center Edition), differently than the Server versions of Windows, has a limit: a single PC can be controlled by a single “local” user (the “real” person on place), OR a single “remote” user. If someone logs into the computer from remote, the local user is disconnected. The following procedure deactivates this block and allows multiple persons to connect and to use a single computer from remote.

Very useful, for example, if you’ve a very strong PC and you want your wife/friend/brother to use an old computer like a “terminal”
to use applications on the new one, at the same time of you. Other
application of the same technique: you’re at work and you want to
connect to your home PC, without blocking your wife that is using the same computer to check email