Virtual windows on the iPad, flash and all

[rockymtnhigh]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/t...eed-state-of-the-art.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Pogue has an interesting piece about Microsoft's Onlive Desktop Plus.

It's a tiny app — about 5 megabytes. When you open it, you see a standard Windows 7 desktop, right there on your iPad. The full, latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader are set up and ready to use — no installation, no serial numbers, no pop-up balloons nagging you to update this or that. It may be the least annoying version of Windows you've ever used.

That's pretty impressive — but not as impressive as what's going on behind the scenes. The PC that's driving your iPad Windows experience is, in fact, a "farm" of computers at one of three data centers thousands of miles away. Every time you tap the screen, scroll a list or type on the on-screen keyboard, you're sending signals to those distant computers. The screen image is blasted back to your iPad with astonishingly little lag.

Very interesting concept and I look forward to seeing how it works in the real world. personally I have zero interest in running Windows on my iPad, but I can see why many would benefit from it.

 

[Pepper]

Interesting. I've been using RDP apps to access my own Windows machines for years but this sounds like it could have some potential.

 

[DodgerKing]

I would like to run the Office Suit as it is many times better than anything on iWorks and or QuickOfficePro.

 

[lparsons21]

Have you looked at Microsoft's Skydrive? It has online versions of word, excel, powerpoint and some note taking app. Not quite the full office suite, but I find it more than good enough.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I would like to run the Office Suit as it is many times better than anything on iWorks and or QuickOfficePro.

Matter of preference. I despise Word in Windows, and on the Mac, so there is little enticing about running Windows apps on my iPad. I do all of my writing in a combination of Nisus Pro Writer, Scrivener, and DevonThink, depending on the task. Of any of them, Nisus is the best.

Yet, I agree this technology has promise, not because it ports Windows, but because it could port ANY operating system.

 

[TheForce]

I still use Logmein and I can access any of my windows apps any time on my ipad. I don't see what this "cloud" will do to improve what I've been doing. LTE makes it really fast too.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I still use Logmein and I can access any of my windows apps any time on my ipad. I don't see what this "cloud" will do to improve what I've been doing. LTE makes it really fast too.

The app will be running Windows on a incredibly high powered farm of machines, and will have much larger bandwidth then you have, or could dream of having. Since the app is basically streaming the screen to you, and only that part that fits in the 10" window of the iPad, you will click on Word, and it will load in 1 second. (At least that is their claim). AND internet access on it, will be equally fast. I need to try out the app and see how fast it is.

 

[JAG72]

Interesting article. Funny part is that I am in the middle of a project to design and build pretty much this exact same solution for our internal users. Even though what this company is doing is only our phase one. Our phase two will blow this solution out of the water IMO.

 

[meStevo]

The app will be running Windows on a incredibly high powered farm of machines, and will have much larger bandwidth then you have, or could dream of having. Since the app is basically streaming the screen to you, and only that part that fits in the 10" window of the iPad, you will click on Word, and it will load in 1 second. (At least that is their claim). AND internet access on it, will be equally fast. I need to try out the app and see how fast it is.

You just described how Splashtop works, just connected to a better computer.

 

[Ilya]

Sounds like an interesting service!
But don't expect that you will have the gigabit speed all the time. The website states this:

¹ While you can always access your OnLive cloud storage, access to your free OnLive Desktop Standard service depends upon availability. OnLive Desktop Plus and Pro provide priority access to OnLive Desktop services.

² Cloud-accelerated Web browsing provides up to gigabit Ethernet speed connections to the Internet for extremely fast, but brief, data transfers. These very fast connections are shared with other OnLive users, and as such, sustained high-speed data transfers are not permitted. Please be reasonable. Your Internet usage may be limited by OnLive in its sole discretion.

³ OnLive will limit PC applications that may be added. Malware or other applications that may compromise security or reliability are not permitted.

 

[TheForce]

The app will be running Windows on a incredibly high powered farm of machines, and will have much larger bandwidth then you have, or could dream of having. Since the app is basically streaming the screen to you, and only that part that fits in the 10" window of the iPad, you will click on Word, and it will load in 1 second. (At least that is their claim). AND internet access on it, will be equally fast. I need to try out the app and see how fast it is.

instantaneous speed is never a concern. I can do the same thing here. Logmein or even GotomyPC I used before, is as fast as my home computer. However, on the long haul it can slow to a crawl if my Verizon internet connect speed is lacking where my ipad is located. I don't believe any service, no matter how fast their farm is, can work faster than Verizon's limit to get that data to my ipad. As far as my outbound here at the house, over the past 2 years it has been pretty consistent at 30Mbit/sec as provisioned download and 5Mbit/sec upload. Sometimes it is faster but never slower as that is what my business account stated for. My LTE here is normally 20 down and 12 up. That varies depending on where I'm at. But, in any case if I'm in a slower speed area for Verizon, that speed will be the ultimate controlling factor for any of these cloud services.

IMO, cloud computing is more about saving money buying and maintaining applications than it is about convenience and speed. If I can maintain my own apps, it would be a step backward to go to cloud computing.

Additionally, those of you in the IT profession should not want to embrace cloud computing too quickly. It is a career killer. As more companies rely on outside services for applications there will be no need for you to work there. Your job will be eliminated. Mark Benioff (sp?) CEO of Salesforce.com markets his business on this fact.