You can certainly purchase Apple’s Remote Desktop software if you want to remote control Macintoshes. It’s a very nice piece of software, it lets you do a lot more than just remotely monitor or seize control of a Mac, and it’s designed to help you maintain a fleet of computers. But if you’re just looking to control that headless Mac Mini that you’re using as household fileserver, it’s overkill. You’d be better off using VNC - “Virtual Network Computing”, arguably one of the least informative network protocol names ever concocted.

VNC provides a platform-independent mechanism for doing remote control of computers. You can access a Macintosh VNC server from a Windows VNC client and expect it to work, more or less. And, fortunately for us, Apple’s built-in remote desktop server that’s bundled with every copy of MacOS X already has support for VNC built into it. All you need to use it is to configure the target Mac correctly and use a VNC client on the machine you want to control your Mac from.

To do this, open the System Preferences; select Sharing and then the Services section. Make sure you’ve checked the Apple Remote Desktop box and then click on the Access Privileges… button on the right hand side. In the dialog box that comes up, check the box for VNC viewers may control screen with password and enter the password you’d like to use. Click OK to dismiss the dialog box, and close the System Preferences and your target Mac should be all set.

Now you’ll need a VNC client on the machine you want to do the controlling from. If you’re on a Macintosh, check out Chicken of the VNC. If you’re using Windows, you might try Real VNC. Both of these are free. If you’re using Linux, your Linux system probably already has a VNC client installed.

Once you’ve got your VNC client installed, all you need to do is run it, ask it to start a new connection, and enter the IP address or name of the Mac you want to control. If you’re using RealVNC under Windows, you may get an error - try it again and it should work this time.

Good luck!

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