Remote desktop - 2 users to 2 laptops

Hi

I have a question that is theoretical at present but I'd like to progress the idea, if possible.

I have 2 laptops, each with XP Pro SP1. They are connected behind a router at home. Suppose that one is "Husband" and the other "Wife". Is it possible to set RD up so that the man can only access his own laptop from work (may be a static or a dynamic IP Address if he uses dial-up) and that the woman can only access her laptop from work (similarly, may be static or dynamic IP Address)? I guess that Port Forwarding is involved but how would I ensure that each accessed *only* their own laptop? Is there any sort of password involved with Port Forwarding so that when the correct password is given, then the router passes information between "Husband" or "Wife" (as appropriate) and the outside world?

Would any additional software have to be installed on either of the laptops at home?

Thanks in advance!

No.
Port forwarding works by forwarding ALL traffic that is inbound on that port to a specified ip address on the internal network.
If you wanted to do RD on both machines you'd have to set each machine up to use a seperate port, and forward the inbound traffic based on the port number. So you'd have to set 'Husband' to use port 1000 and on the router you'd have to setup port forwarding on port 1000 to be sent to the 'Husband' laptop. You'd have to do the same thing for the 'Wife' laptop with a differant port number.
However,
I'm not sure that Remote Desktop can be set to use a differant port than the default. You can use any number of other products (usually free) to accomplish the same thing. I prefer RealVNC which can be found here: http://www.realvnc.com/v4/winvnc.html

The easiest way to do this is to setup a VPN server on your network and allow incoming connections on 1723, pptp. Once you're in, you can RD to your laptop or computer.

Thanks to both of you. I'll need to have a think about this. I suspect I'll be back for further guidance now that I know it's possible!

I know this is late. But couldnt you simply set up each computer behind the router to its own I.P. for the port forward? So that when it comes to the log on to the computer just choose which log on?

Or does remote desktop only allow one log on per I.P.

Im more curious on this topic than giving advice. As I only learned about Remote Desktop a few weeks ago.