iPad apps review - RDP

This is another app I had already on the iPhone which added a "free" improved version for the iPad, RDP is very useful to be able to remotely access my work PC laptop when I need to do something that can only be done on a PC or where I only have the data on the laptop hard disk. As such, this app alone make it much more practical to use the iPad as my sole computing platform (OK, the only one I have to actually carry around with me!)

This app works very well, although I wish it had a way to automatically enable the VPN connection before trying to connect as that little detour into the iPad settings before launching the app is something I'm always forgetting until it fails to connect and then it dawns on me why.

I have also needed to install a little app from no-ip on the laptop to publish it's IP to whenever it changes as for some reason, the DNS entry for my machine on campus fails to work. I suspect this is due to my over zealous firewall on the laptop rather than any short fall of this app :)





What else do I need to say about this app? Oh, it has a bit of an odd way of dealing with keyboard entry and mouse events. The keyboard will work with the external Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad, but delete is always very slow on both the external and virtual keyboard. Normal typing is fine and keeps up, but delete takes almost a second to register and drops rather than buffers the key presses. The mouse foibles are dictated by having a touch screen with no mouse over or right click, so the app provides an icon to toggle the mouse behaviour accordingly. This also includes a "wheel mouse" mode for scrolling, but I've never actually used that to know if it works.

The pro version of this app allows keyboard macros to be set up and connection details for oodles of devices to be added and then chosen from a list. I can't actually remember how many as I've only ever needed 2, but it's a screen full of slots :)

The app only allows a choice of 8bit or 16bit graphics for the connection, and it would be nice to be able to tell windows to fall back to a simpler presentation without wallpaper etc as the RDP client in Windows allows, but with a decent wifi connection, or even 3G, the lag dealing with the better graphics isn't too bad so this isn't essential unless you needed to use GPRS - in which case, you probably need a terminal service instead. :)

If you need to access machines running different OS too, you probably also need to use VNC rather than RDP, in which case it would probably be best to install that on any PCs too, so again, this wouldn't be the app for you.

Summary - does what it says on the tin, but only right if you need what's in the tin :)

- Posted using BlogPress from mobile device