Working remotely is not something new for the public sector, a world seen by many to be behind the times and slow to react to change. In fact in order to our job -- that is to serve the public -- public sector employees are on a constant search for quicker and cheaper ways to do things.

My week as the IT Survivor on Magnetic Island was pretty radical. Apart from getting to soak up the sunny shores of tropical Queensland, I also found myself getting a whole lot of work done -- and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with technology. As someone who works remotely on a regular basis, I'm pretty experienced with completing tasks and connecting with clients on the go, but I also picked up a few new tips along the way. Here are some ideas to help make your remote working experience more productive and enjoyable.

Three days in and we're wrapping up the last of IT Survivor winner Mark Monfort's challenges. The scenario he has been tasked with is a pretty common one: having to complete some tasks on a corporate network ahead of a major presentation at the end of the week.

This week saw our IT Survivor winner Mark Monfort commence his gruelling series of remote working challenges on Magnetic Island. Sounds like a super-tough gig, but Mark’s been holding up okay so far. We caught up with Mark to get his thoughts on the whole experience so far.

We asked you to devise creative challenges for the lucky Lifehacker reader who'll soon blogging about using VMware Horizon 6 to work remotely while enjoying a trip to beautiful Magnetic Island. We had hundreds of great challenges, and our two favourites have each won a Dell Chromebook 11!

Hundreds of readers entered our IT Survivor competition to blog about using VMware Horizon 6 to work remotely while enjoying a trip to beautiful Magnetic Island. We've sifted through the entries, and picked the overall winner. Step forward . . .

You may have heard that we've teamed up with VMware to find one Lifehacker reader to become our ‘IT Survivor’ blogger -- and write for us from Queensland's tropical Magnetic Island! It's an amazing competition (enter here), and in this post we’ve got more to give away -- two Dell Chromebook 11s! To enter, simply tell us what remote work challenges you’d like to see our ‘IT Survivor’ try on the island. Easy!

Lifehacker readers know that working from home or the road is more important than ever, and to showcase this, Lifehacker is looking for one reader to become our "IT Survivor" blogger. To celebrate the launch of VMware Horizon 6 -- which allows organisations to deliver virtualised or remote desktops and applications through a single platform – we'll be sending one reader and their significant other (or friend) to beautiful Magnetic Island in Queensland. Pretty awesome, right? Entering is easy...

So last week I took a quick trip to Magnetic Island off Townsville for a test drive of the IT Survivor challenge we're running with VMware, where one reader will get to spend 6 nights staying on the tropical island while testing out the capabilities of Horizon 6. This is what I learned from the experience -- lessons you can use even if you're not lounging around enjoying an ocean view.

Alright you've already seen the bath at the Grand Mercure Apartments on Magnetic Island where I stayed for my preview of the IT Survivor challenge. Now it's time to check out the overall accommodation.

It's the end of the week and it's time to relax. In the IT Survivor context, that can only mean one thing: using my virtual desktop in the bath.

Sure, I'm on Magnetic Island to demonstrate how to work remotely using VMware Horizon 6, but it would be foolish not to take advantage of the location as well. And what better way to do that than with a brisk 5km walk?

Thanks to reader Daniel for pointing out a really obvious way to enhance my experience of running Windows 7 on a Chromebook via VMware Horizon View: using Chrome's full-screen presentation view to get rid of the ChromeOS toolbar.

It's one thing for a virtual desktop like VMware Horizon to handle a relatively low-powered application like Word. What happens with something that's more graphically intensive and needs more data -- like Google Earth? As part of our IT Survivor challenge, I decided to find out.

So I can see the ocean from my window and I want to go for a long bushwalk to explore Magnetic Island, but I am supposed to be testing out how easily our IT Survivor competition winner can work remotely. The central technology involved there is VMware's Horizon 6 virtual desktop. This is how I'm using it.

So I've reached Magnetic Island for our IT Survivor challenge and the technology is working well so far. With one exception: Google Maps.