iPad and LogMeIn make a laptop obsolete?

cvballa said:

I was in the market for a macbook pro and then my office got me an ipad. I use LogMeIn to log in to my work computer and it works amazingly well. It made me think that instead of replacing my Dell laptop with a 13'' macbook I would just get a base model iMac and get a much better computer for the same price. I rarely take my laptop out of the house anyway and if i did need to be portable I could just log into my home iMac if I needed to use any software that was not available on the iPad. Plus with multitasking and printing coming to the iPad next month it becomes more feasable.

What are your thoughts? Any drawbacks/advantages you see with this strategy?


Thanks

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I do it all the time dude. The great thing is that I am currently in Finland where the operators actually encourage data usage so my flat rate €9.90 all I can eat, dual sim is just what the doctor ordered. I keep one card in my iPhone and one in my iPad. Unlimited data for €9.90. I stay connected to my home computer (Mac Mini) all day. My new 17 inch MBP just sits at home and is mainly used only for photo editing, some emails from time to time and not much more. The iPad is perfect. For those times when I need wifi, such as when there is a particular update or piece of software that will only download via wifi, I have a portable wifi base station. When traveling I just pop in a sim card from the local operator of the country I am in, and I am all set. Your solution is perfect. Cheers.

Probably the biggest draw back would be if your connection at home went down and you wasn't able to access something that you needed.

LogMeIn is far to slow to function as a laptop replacement, even over a very fast local area connection. I use it all the time and its very useful, but because of the slow refresh rate and the lack of video acceleration, its not going to function like a laptop. You may be able to get through some flash webpages, but video and accelerated graphics will not be usable. You'll obviously be able to run applications on the remote computer, but again due to the slow refresh rate, the experience will be not be great and will not be something that you'll want to work on for a long period of time. Overall logmein is fine if you need to access something in a pinch, but if you're needing something thats only available on a desktop/laptop, an ipad and LogMeIn is not a viable solution.

it all depends on what programs you need to run while away from home, for your uses you probably don't need a laptop, but many programs on OS X wont work well on a touch screen or with the lag from acessing it over the internet so there may be problems with that.

LogMeIn is great, but it's more for light tasks and there are still many reasons to have a laptop.

For example if I want to develop a powerpoint slide deck, it's much easier to do on a laptop than over LogMeIn. Or if I want to play movies on my TV over HDMI, a laptop can do it but an iPad can't. Or if I want to play computer games, the lag from LogMeIn (compared to just playing the game directly on the laptop) makes most games infeasible.

Well, the new iMacs, even the base model, is a sweet machine and a great value.

I have one of the older iMacs, and use iSSH to connect to it from my iPad. It uses OSX's built in Remote Access. Doesn't support audio though. Just screen, keyboard and mouse. I do development, so I use terminal mode a lot also.

It all depends on exactly what you find yourself doing. The combination for me worked great. I have iWorks 09 on my iMac, and the Pages and Numbers Apps for my iPad. I store my documents in the cloud (iWork.com, or DropBox are both free). I then edit them from either iPad or iMac as needed. I have a lot of PDF manuals and such in GoodReader, I have Evernote (again, cloud based) for jotting notes and clipping websites, etc.

Let us know how it works out for you.

Logmein is way too slow for me to be any useful besides extremely light tasks. The refresh rate is simply too slow to do much of anything.

Add another for "logmein to slow" crowd. Right now I have a vnc server setup each of my computers but Im looking at an option for even faster access. The vnc option is still faster and smoother then logmein IMO. Im looking into Citrix xendesktop or xenapp as a virtual desktop option. They even have a ipad app that looks great.

LogMeIn is too slow, yes, and you also want a keyboard for some things.

Are there other VNC type apps that are faster? i love how easy it is to use LogMeIn, it just works, however, it is painfully slow, so slow on my current connection settings that I can barely get the simplest of tasks done. Thanks.

chiefroastbeef said:

Are there other VNC type apps that are faster? i love how easy it is to use LogMeIn, it just works, however, it is painfully slow, so slow on my current connection settings that I can barely get the simplest of tasks done. Thanks.

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I use iTeleport but have no idea if it's faster.

netdog said:

LogMeIn is too slow, yes, and you also want a keyboard for some things.

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I use logmein for fetching documents that accidentally aren't on drop box or iDisk. I use air video free for watching movies, I have the bt keyboard for longer text but the main thing I'm really waiting for is printing. That would make it pretty much perfect for my uses.
You don't want to work on the home computer via logmein but just fetching stuff and sending large emails that I don't want to send via 3G works perfect.

One other use I have is for solving other peoples problems they have without the need to get there. Eg. My father is having excel questions, my mother in law has trouble watching a movie, so I install vlc all that kind of fiddley things.

chiefroastbeef said:

Are there other VNC type apps that are faster? i love how easy it is to use LogMeIn, it just works, however, it is painfully slow, so slow on my current connection settings that I can barely get the simplest of tasks done. Thanks.

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I use realvnc on pc and realvnc viewer on ipad/phone/pod...much faster then logmein

Splashtop remote desktop is one of the top apps, anyone tried it, supposed to be the fastest for video, flash , etc?

mrkramer said:

it all depends on what programs you need to run while away from home, for your uses you probably don't need a laptop, but many programs on OS X wont work well on a touch screen or with the lag from acessing it over the internet so there may be problems with that.

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A note on you signature mate. As the current pope said, "Jesus was not Spartacus". It is the height of arrogance to misappropriate religions and religious figures for particular ideologies.

Render unto Caesar, my friend.

I agree...

I was in Florida on vacation 2 weeks ago, and a client asked me to build him a print ad to run in a local magazine. I was able to use InDesign, Photoshop, etc., all remotely using LogMeIn from my iPad and complete his ad. It's my most used app. I use it everyday.

Logmein works great, but i still think that having a laptop will kick 9 colours pof nonsense out of it performance wise

designresults said:

I was in Florida on vacation 2 weeks ago, and a client asked me to build him a print ad to run in a local magazine. I was able to use InDesign, Photoshop, etc., all remotely using LogMeIn from my iPad and complete his ad. It's my most used app. I use it everyday.

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Wow, that is quite amazing. Do you have patience or is LogMeIn quicker for you somehow?

i use Logmein to access off-site computers and iTap VNC to access my computers when I'm home.. the thing is that iTap updated the app a few days ago and the old version was better in my opinion.. kept the desktop full screen on the ipad all the time… with the new version I have to resize the screen all the time

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9550/5.0.0.713 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I really don't see what's So great with log me in. I use teamviewer and it works very well. Plus its free for personal use.

No more laptop ever. I use jump instead of logMeIn. If I want my own video I have AirVideo for that. I can access all my files. I can even browse the Internet and do it well from Jump, if I so desire. iPad and Desktop is a great combo.

Will I be able to run flash from desktop and do it well, probably not. But all the places I go to are html5 or I can use the YouTube app. I can also play poker from PokerStars on the iPad through the desktop and it runs sweet, no hiccups or pauses or disconnects. Runs like it would straight from the PC.

I use it also to login to my customers PCs as well. I haven't seen one thing a laptop could do that my iPad can't.

OSMac said:

Splashtop remote desktop is one of the top apps, anyone tried it, supposed to be the fastest for video, flash , etc?

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I downloaded recently because I heard the same, they even show World of Warcraft running on it but I have 4.2 and it doesn't run on that, yet. So I'll have to wait.

chiefroastbeef said:

Wow, that is quite amazing. Do you have patience or is LogMeIn quicker for you somehow?

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It was definitely a slower process, probably twice as long as it should have taken, but it got the job done. And the client was happy that I was able to meet the deadline for him, even though I was out of town. Also, it was interesting using Photoshop, InDesign, etc. in strictly a touch environment.