At present, home PCs are maintained in a very costly and inefficient way. When problems arise, the user has to call a support center to try to get the problem resolved. The user hangs on the line to talk to a technician. The technician will often try to hone in on the problem by going through a script of possible problems related to what the user is talking about. The process can be time consuming and frustrating, as often times, users, especially inexperienced ones, cannot explain adequately what the problem is and technicians are tied to a script of "possible" solutions that may or may not resolve that user's particular problem. In this paper we propose a new usage model that uses Intel^® Active Management Technology^‡ (Intel^® AMT) to maintain home PCs remotely.

In this usage model the home PC is connected and managed with Intel AMT remotely. To ensure a secure connection between the remote management service and the home PC, a Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is used. Additionally, home PC users have full control over when their PC is accessed and by whom. And finally, users with very little computer knowledge can use this model as the operations are simple and easy to use.

In this paper we describe the architecture of this usage model and discuss the problems of connection security and ease of use. We also present a typical scenario of our usage model to illustrate the convenience and efficiency that is available to PC users and IT technicians when using Intel AMT.

^‡ Intel Active Management Technology: Intel^® Active Management Technology (Intel^® AMT) requires the platform to have an Intel^® AMT-enabled chipset, network hardware and software. The platform must also be connected to a power source and an active LAN port.