OnLive have been around for a while now and are known more for their OnLive Gaming service. OnLive Desktop is a free app that’s available on the iTunes app store (US only for the moment) that allows you to access a Windows 7 virtual machine from your iPad. OnLive starts up a virtual machine on one of its servers and streams the screen to your iPad. The user can then interact with the screen and the information will be relayed back to the virtual machine.
Once you’ve loaded up the app and have connected to a desktop you will be presented with the standard Windows 7 interface. There’s also a number of Microsoft Office applications for you to use for free including Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Of course all the other standard Windows 7 programs will be available to you as well as a few touch based games.
You interact with your Windows 7 desktop the same way you’d normally use your iPad, ie. pinch to zoom etc.. and you can even use an external bluetooth keyboard if you wish. At the moment this free service operates on an “as-available” basis, which means it just makes use of the left over capacity from OnLive’s gaming service and only offers 2GB storage.
However this won’t do for most businesses so a subscription service called OnLive Desktop Pro will be available soon for $9.99 per month. This service will provide a larger selection of applications and features, 50GB of storage space, and also priority access to OnLives server resources. Another service “Onlive Enterprise” will also be available which will allow installation of custom programs and allow IT staff full access to the virtual machine.
Of course the big limitation with this service is that you will need a pretty quick internet connection to use it which isn’t really much good for people who are travelling or who have below par internet connections.
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