I need an easy way to help my parents with their computer (XP) and am 
looking for suggestions.
I obviously need it to be secure, but I don't want them to have to deal 
with enabling and disabling port forwarding, so the port forwarding 
options would always have port forwarding on.

The options I am looking at are the following:

--logmein.com (like gotomypc.com but free)
reqires the logmein software running on their machine.  I could probably 
have them turn it off and only have it running when I'm going to connect.

--VNC solution (UltraVNC, TightVNC, etc)
Use port forwarding to their machine.. They would start VNC server when 
I need to connect and turn it off when I am done.
If I leave port forwarding always on, but the VNC software is not 
running and therefore their machine is not listening on the port, the 
machine should be safe..correct?

--Remote Desktop
Use port forwarding to their machine.  Allows anyone to hit their 
machine since it is always running..  Obviously I would set it for 
password access.

thanks,
tom