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LogMeIn For iPad and Android: hands on

It offers great flexibility for mobile platforms, but you'll have to like silent movies for now.

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Alex Kidman
Alex Kidman is a freelance word writing machine masquerading as a person, a disguise he's managed for over fifteen years now, including a three year stint at ZDNet/CNET Australia. He likes cats, retro gaming and terrible puns.
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Alex Kidman
2 min read
Access your PC remotely through the iPad (Credit: LogMeIn)

We've covered LogMeIn's remote access services before — you can read our full review here — but today in Sydney we got a look at where LogMeIn is heading in a mobile sense with a hands-on demonstration hosted by LogMeIn's Senior Manager Matt Fleming.

Already available if you've imported an iPad (or are reading this after the 28th of May) is LogMeIn Ignition for iPad. It's a scaling up of the excellent iPhone application with the extra screen size of the iPad put to good use.

We got a brief hands on with its streamlined, iPad-friendly interface, which includes a full sized keyboard and the option to have the mouse scroll to your finger, as opposed to the entire screen as on the iPhone app. It adds a lot of functionality to the application and as a result to the iPad itself. You might not be able to multi-task on an iPad directly, but a LogMeIn controlled PC or Mac will do that just fine for you. The only catch is that the iPad client doesn't support sound, according to LogMeIn's Matt Fleming. We asked him if that was likely to change, and he said "not yet". So if you wanted to watch flash video via your desktop, you'd better be ready for silent movies for now.

The iPad-friendly interface includes a full sized keyboard. (Credit: LogMeIn)

LogMeIn Ignition for iPad isn't an inexpensive application at AU$36.99, but it is a universal application, meaning if you've already bought it for the iPhone, the iPad version is yours gratis, and vice versa.

Fleming also showed off the Android LogMeIn client, which is currently in closed beta, running on an HTC Desire. It's not clear whether the client will be backwards compatible with older Android handsets, but at least on the Desire the experience is much the same as it is on the iPhone; good for quick emergency fixes on a remote machine but not something you'd want to spend hours running. Neither the release date for the full client or pricing were available at the time of writing.