TeamViewer is free, provided that you're dabbling in noncommercial activities only. Note that TeamViewer doesn't support video or audio streaming, unlike LogMeIn Pro for iPad and Splashtop Remote Desktop. Whenever we did this, TeamViewer re-launched from its startup screen and required that we reconnect to our desktop.

Another quibble was that the app disconnected us automatically if our tablet's screen timed out from inactivity, or if we switched out of the app and switched back. Other actions, however, such as switching to another Chrome tab, were faster-the lag seemed to be tied to whether the screen TeamViewer aimed to load was particularly graphics-intensive. It took about three seconds for the app to show the results of our clicking on a particular spot-to launch QuickTime, for instance-and there was no way to tell if it had sensed our action at all, except to wait it out. The screen had impressively rapid refresh rates, but we found that there was some lag in registering certain input data. After the fairly simple process of connecting to our notebook, we were able to access the full desktop. We tested TeamViewer over a public Wi-Fi network and a local network using an iPad, Kindle Fire and an Android Honeycomb tablet. We liked how we could preview files such as images and documents before transferring them onto our device. The TeamViewer app on our tablet showed us the list of drives available on the system, and our computer showed a log of all the folders we viewed, for security purposes. We selected the File mode on the app by tapping on the appropriate tab and entering our partner ID and password. TeamViewer offers the ability to copy files from your PC to your iPad and vice versa. Dragging with two fingers doubles as a mouse wheel function, pinching works for zooming, and shaking your device switches quickly between two monitors. We performed single-finger taps for clicks, used two-finger taps for right-clicks, and could double-tap and hold to drag and drop or resize or move windows.

The app lets us explore our desktop using various multitouch gestures.

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