remote desktops

I have a family member who lives a considerable distance from me and is purchasing a laptop for the first time; in fact it will be the first computer this person has ever owned. Walking him through the process of uninstalling bloatware and installing security programs will be long and arduous via telephone.

I have never used a remote desktop program before, but I am looking into using one for this task. This is a very knowledgeable community at MajorGeeks, so I thought to ask here if anyone has any recommendations on what programs to look at and if anyone with some spare time on their hands had any tips/pointers on the subject to send my way. TY for your time in advance!

Almost forgot... I am running XP Pro and he will be using Vista Home Premium.

 

You could also use Logmein (the free version) as an alternative suggestion.

 

Another alternative is TeamViewer.

 

TY for your responses. One more question, I see in Digitalocksmith's link to howtogeek.com regarding the set up of Vista for remote desktop, that the article states (final line of the article):"Note: This will not work for Home editions of Windows Vista". Am I just out of luck then, trying to connect to a computer using Vista Home Premium, or is that statement out of date or specific only to the built-in windows remote assistant function? If using a program such as Logmein or Team Viewer will I still need to enable remote access in the fashion that that link states and be unable to on account of the Vista Home OS on my relative's computer?

 

No, Logmein and TeamViewer will work with any version of Vista and you don't need to enable remote access in the fashion that that link states. References:
http://support.teamviewer.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=38&nav=0,13
https://logmeinsupport.com/kblive/crm/selfservice/displaywh.jsp?DocId=962