How to get OnLive Desktop for iPad in Australia

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 16 January 2012 18:31

Opinion and Analysis

If you've tried looking for the OnLive Desktop but couldn't find it in the Australian App Store, and were as disappointed as I am that OnLive couldn't get its damned act together for us Down Under, there is another way - even if it's slightly fiddly.

OnLive is the company that lets you play the latest games streamed straight to your desktop or portable computer without having to fiddle with installation DVDs, and without having to worry about how powerful your existing computer is.

Although Australians can only download the OnLive Viewer from the Australian App Store, and watch other people playing the mainstream hit games that OnLive offers, Aussies can't yet actually play any of those games.

A similarly sad story exists for the new OnLive Desktop. Unlike the OnLive Viewer, the OnLive Desktop, available free for iPads in the US, is not even available in the Australian iTunes App Store.

But what IS the OnLive Desktop, I hear you ask? It's a virtual window into a cloud-hosted copy of Windows 7 with Microsoft Office 2010 pre-loaded, giving you the ability to run Windows 7 in full touch mode right on your iPad.

It requires a 1 megabit connection or faster to deliver seamlessly smooth video and screen refresh rates, and while some might think that Australia's too far away from the US for this to work properly, or that Australians need an NBN for this to work, the truth is that the service works just fine in Australia - if you know how to get a copy onto your iPad.

OnLive Desktop gives you a version of Windows 7 that basically only has Office 2010, Microsoft's 'Windows 7 Touch Pack', Sticky Notes, a calculator and 2GB of free online storage - everything else in Windows has been locked down.

That means you can't use it to surf the web with IE 9, nor can you install any other software, although OnLive will be offering a service of its Desktop for around US $9.99 per month that does let you install all kinds of third party Windows programs and gives you access to more online storage.

However, in its current form, you basically get Windows and Office 2010, with the free 2GB of online space the only way to save files, for each time that you re-start the OnLive Desktop anew, any icons or shortcuts you may have created on the desktop are wiped.

Of course, anyone that has loaded Teamviewer, LogMeIn, Splashtop Remote or some other VNC-style software onto their Windows PCs (or Macs) and then played with their regular computer mirrored onto their iPad's screen knows pretty much how this works.

That said, Splashtop Remote is the closest experience, as your finger taps are mouse clicks, unlike in Teamviewer or other software that forces you to drag a mouse arrow around the screen instead of simply using your finger to point and click.

So'¦ how does an Australian, with an Australian App Store account, get the OnLive Desktop onto their iPad to have a look and see what the fuss is all about?

It's answered and concluded on page two, so please read on!