San Francisco — In a move that would delight the growing iPad users community, as OnLive, which inscribed its name in the cloud gaming service, has now launched OnLive Desktop, a virtual desktop that streams Windows applications, Flash to Apple’s iPad at blazing speeds.
The company presents two versions of its OnLive Desktop solution. The free version, simply dubbed as OnLive Desktop, lets iPad users with an entire Windows 7 desktop and free access to the latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as Adobe Reader (PDF) including Internet Explorer. OnLive released a free version of its Windows 7 desktop for iPad in January, but without a Web browser.
Your optional tools for connecting with OnLive Desktop on an iPad: keyboard and stylus. (Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
A second subscription version of the solution, dubbed as OnLive Desktop Plus, costs $5 per month and bundles the so-called cloud browser, an Internet Explorer connection that uses the OnLive backbone to connect at what the company calls gigabit speeds. The service builds upon the OnLive Desktop virtual Windows desktop technology the company introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Besides, both the free and paid versions of OnLive Desktop is packed with 2GB of cloud storage. Also, as part of the service, users can sync documents between this online desktop and their PCs, as well as get the ability to transfer files from email programs like Gmail via the Dropbox cloud storage environment, and access to Adobe Flash and Acrobat plugins.
As a matter of fact, support for Flash is very essential because iPad does not natively support the technology. But there is a lot of Flash content out there and it is important for OnLive to bring it to the iPad through a virtual desktop, said Steve Perlman, co-founder and CEO of OnLive.
In a swift demo given at the company’s offices in San Francisco, Perlman showed how Flash animation can run robustly on an iPad through the Windows IE browser. He visited the Mercedes-Benz site and displayed how animation of various car models was delivered. On the CBS-TV website, he demoed a clip of the TV series Hawaii Five-O, and demonstrated how scrolling down below the window would stop the video stream to more efficiently deliver content to the page.
“Experiencing a full Flash-enabled Web experience at gigabit speeds on iPad is nothing short of breathtaking, and OnLive Desktop Plus is your ticket to ride,” said Perlman, in a statement. “Combine that with OnLive Desktop’s full-featured Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader PC applications and not only do you have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the world’s most powerful productivity tools literally at your fingertips.”
Moreover, with the addition of IE, you now have what amounts to a completely functioning desktop on the iPad, at least for short trips when you just can not carry a laptop. While the choice of IE as opposed to Firefox or Chrome may make some users cringe, the advantage here is you can use IE to access Adobe Flash content that would otherwise be unavailable on the iPad.
Furthermore, some outstanding analysis from tech experts about how IE performed on OnLive Desktop, but many critics are giving the experience positive reviews. “OnLive’s version of IE is surprisingly speedy, period,” Harry McCracken said on Time. USA Today’s Edward C. Baig said the browsing experience was “zippy.” OnLive is using a 1 gigabit per second connection from its servers to deliver IE to your iPad’s virtual desktop.
OnLive is employing three data centers–in the Washington, D.C. area, Dallas, and San Francisco–to cover nearly all of the continental United States. Internet content is piped to those data centers on 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) connections to deliver the virtual desktops to end users at high speed and with low latency.
Finally, OnLive is planning a future version, labeled OnLive Desktop Pro, will cost $10 per month, will provide 50GB of cloud storage and the ability to add a select number of PC applications not included in OnLive Desktop Plus. An enterprise version is also planned.
To begin enjoying the latest gizmo, download OnLive Desktop Plus from the App Store, and then sign-up for an OnLive account and your preferred plan through OnLive’s site. You cannot sign up for OnLive through the iPad app.