It’s Friday, so I thought I’d share a cool deal I’ve found for the Splashtop app for the Apple iPad. The remote desktop app is now just 99 cents for the weekend, which is a steep drop from the $6 it normally runs.
The Apple iPad app is made by DeviceVM and it essentially turns your tablet into a remote terminal for your desktop. You have to install software on your computer too and it streams content over WiFi.
I’ve found the Apple iPad to be a cool multimedia device but I often run into its iTunes-centric limitations. Most of the videos I have on my 1 TB hard drive are not in iTunes-friendly formats and I’m far too lazy to use Handbrake to convert them over. The Splashtop app takes care of that though, as you’ll be able to stream movies and television shows to your tablet over WiFi.
It’s not just content though, as you can access pretty much anything on your computer on the tablet with this Splashtop iPad app. This includes Flash content from the web and it gets Apple’s no-Flash stance by essentially just being a proxy server.
There’s a little bit of lag when streaming your movies, especially if your WiFi isn’t that strong. I also question the total usefulness: if I’m in my house on WiFi, I don’t really need to watch my content on a 10-inch screen. I’d rather watch it on my big-screen television or on my computer monitor, which is double the size of the Apple iPad.
Still, the Splashtop app is undeniably cool and it could come in handy when I’m away from a computer and just want to quickly check on something. The discounted price definitely makes it worth it but that price will only be good for another few days. Try it out and let us know what you think.
Also, bonus points for whoever points out what movie/TV show is in the picture above.