Once that has been done you can enter your details, and have the app save them if you want.
You can also change any options, such as the colour scheme, if you want a transparent keyboard and control bar, and more.
To start the session, just click on Connect.
You will then be presented with a desktop (in this example the control bar, at the top of the screen, is transparent – often making it hard to see).
If you click on the keyboard icon, the iPad keyboard will appear (in this example I set a non transparent keyboard because it was quite difficult to use the transparent one and a little off putting, but that’s just me).
Here is the control panel with the non transparent setting – whilst this makes it easier to see and use, you actually lose a bit of the bottom of the screen.
Firing up Firebox and choosing the UWHS displays it just as you would expect any browser to do. And remember you can visit sites with Flash and they will work! But that is because its not actually on your iPad.
You can also access and use any of the applications that are available to you on this virtual PC.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I have to be honest, it takes quite a lot of getting used to using AlwaysOnPC on the iPad. It really does feel like it was designed for a mouse than a multi-touch device. It can be very fiddly at times and I have often closed an application or a window instead of expanding it just because of that. Also scrolling up and down the page isn’t as easy or smooth as I would have liked. And it is quite slow, there is no getting around that fact. They say it is up to 5 times faster than competing apps – I can’t say if that is true or not as I haven’t tried any of them, but I can say this is not as fast as I hoped it would be, and that is over a very fast connection.
Here I reviewed the iPad version, there is also a version for the iPhone and also for Android.
You can also access AlwaysOnPC from a desktop computer as well, which to be honest is a lot easier than using it on a mobile device. You may want to do this from someone else’s computer, or a work computer to be able to access any of your data or access other applications that may not work or being blocked. This access comes free with whichever version of AlwaysOnPC you buy.
So, is it worth £5.99? The answer to that is yes, while it isn’t going to be something I use very often, it is something that I will use, and for £5.99 it doesn’t break the bank.
The fact I can now check websites that use Flash and I can see the site how it is supposed to be rather than how Apple have decided I will see it is worth the money to me. And that is without using any of the other applications
I just hope the speed and control issues can be resolved to make an overall better user experience.
You can learn more about AlwaysOnPC from their website.
Have you use this or any other similar app? Tell us what you think.
