I'm really tempted to buy an iPad as my default device instead of my late 2010 13" Air, but there are some apps that just aren't available and have no alternative on iOS, in particular QuickBooks. (I don't do media editing, though I do have my pics in Aperture; most of my stuff is email, word processing, accounting, web browsing, manipulating records (PDFs), etc.) It's one thing to "access" a Mac/PC via VNC, but quite another level to actually try to get work done. I've done it from my iPhone (using TeamViewer) but that's clumsy at best. Good enough to launch an app and look around. Have any of you tried to actually get work done via VNC (from an iPad to Mac/PC) on a regular basis? How well does it work?
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Using Mac/PC apps via VNC - is it practical?
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It is practical if you have a bluetooth keyboard with your iPad.
Splashtop is the client I use and its pretty good. And, if you jailbreak your iPad, you can also add a bluetooth mouse to your setup making it even easier, as mouse clicks are seen as touching the ipad screen.
Splashtop is the client I use and its pretty good. And, if you jailbreak your iPad, you can also add a bluetooth mouse to your setup making it even easier, as mouse clicks are seen as touching the ipad screen.
It depends somewhat on your connection speed, but like you said... you don't have a choice of platform with some applications. If you really need to use Quickbooks on your iPad, a VNC client is pretty much your only solution. Otherwise get a laptop.
VNC is pretty poor for remote control (slow, incomplete screen updates, etc). There doesn't seem to be many alternatives though.
On Windows, RDP is WAY superior to VNC, but unfortunately there's nothing on the mac I have seen that comes close.
I used to use VNC on a regular basis for remote desktop administration, but since Windows shipped with remote assistance, and servers have Remote desktop, I'm glad to be rid of it.
The only VNC based software i use now is to get onto my mac mini that sits in the corner downloading torrents and acting as a time machine backup location.
If you have a PC to run the software on, i'd see if you can find a remote desktop/RDP app for the ipad instead. The results will be much better than with VNC.
On Windows, RDP is WAY superior to VNC, but unfortunately there's nothing on the mac I have seen that comes close.
I used to use VNC on a regular basis for remote desktop administration, but since Windows shipped with remote assistance, and servers have Remote desktop, I'm glad to be rid of it.
The only VNC based software i use now is to get onto my mac mini that sits in the corner downloading torrents and acting as a time machine backup location.
If you have a PC to run the software on, i'd see if you can find a remote desktop/RDP app for the ipad instead. The results will be much better than with VNC.