A while back, Splashtop released a version of its streaming software specifically designed for Windows 8 and its touch interface, known as Win8 Metro TestBed. While I already owned and paid for the standard version, it wasn’t exactly Metro/Modern friendly, so once again Slashtop gets my money. The $10 or so aside, how well does this solution work? Near flawlessly. Response time is excellent and using apps feels like it would with a Windows 8 touch device. Games were much more fun when using the iPad/Win8 combination. The touch gestures for the charm bar and other elements worked great- though it took me a bit to figure out. I was used to accessing things by clicking in corners and other desktop navigation methods. This was quite a different way of doing things. Even the desktop seemed to navigate pretty darn well in Windows 8 via the iPad. Was the desktop perfect? No, but it won’t be on any tablet, since it really isn’t all that touch friendly. I highly recommend this method for testing out Windows 8 until you pick up some official Windows hardware. For starters, it costs very little compared to buying a Windows 7 tablet and upgrading. If you have a good PC and internet connection, it also works much better than many Win7 tablets. Most Win7 lower-priced tablets seem to give a less than stellar Windows 8 demonstration but the streaming solution was very quick and felt just as easy to use as iOS did. Installation is a breeze as well. To get started you simply buy the app, install the streamer on your desktop, and you are in business. While this might be obvious, keep in mind you will need a working copy of Windows 8 installed on a PC in order to use this. Anyone else use this on the iPad or even an Android tablet? What do you think? You can check out the app from their official site. Again this allows you to ‘stream’ Windows 8 to Android and iOS hardware. Pretty cool way to give Win8 a try.]]>
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To clarify, this is not only available for iPad, it can be done just as well on Android phones / tablets.
Oh, sorry I missed the brief mention at the very end. I have not tried Splashtop but I use TeamViewer a lot and have been meaning to use that with Windows 8. Of course either way you’re still not running Windows 8 ON the tablet per se.
The only problem I had with standard Splashtop is that it was trying to use the mouse-style of navigation.
The Metro TestBed from Splashpad is specifically designed to emulate the touch components of Windows 8, which makes it much more usable and natural feeling. Not sure if TeamViewer would provide that same experience or not.
As for using the iPad for this over Android— it had a bigger screen. I actually favor Android over iOS but my iPad is the only 10-inch tablet I own. My Android devices are all 7-inch and I wanted to try it on a larger screen since that is pretty much what size MS seems to be targeting.