When I finally upgraded from my ancient laptop to a newer, sleeker machine, I went with a netbook form factor.  There are a few reasons for this, but mostly it boils down to usefulness.  iPads are great, and a lot of fun, but they’re not terribly flexible or strong.  I can’t edit images in an iPad.  I can’t do a lot of typing with an iPad.  There are no Flash videos, so standard things like YouTube are right out.  You can’t Hulu on it, either.  So, I spent more money and got something capable of performing all the functions of a standard desktop, but in a 13-inch format.  It’s a shame I didn’t know about OnLive Desktop Plus, an app/service that puts a real Windows 7 PC right into your iPad.

So how does it work?  Well, you log into OnLive Desktop, and boom, there’s a Windows 7 desktop.  Right there, you have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Paint, Media Player, and 2 GB of storage on the go… basically anything you need, and it all runs remotely from a state-of-the-art computer farm thousands of miles away.  Your iPad connects to OnLive, and OnLive does whatever you want with blazingly fast speeds of up to 1000 times faster than your high-speed connection (though they recommend a 2 megabyte connection on your end for OnLive to work properly).  Basically, OnLive’s server farm fetches the data, and sends only exactly what your iPad needs, which allows it to work blazingly fast.

Of course, you need a desktop or laptop connection to set up OnLive Desktop, but once it is configured… you’re ready to go.  Of course, with the $5 per month premium OnLive Desktop Plus, you get all this plus a staggering 1gb-a-second Internet connection with Internet Explorer and Adobe.  If this sounds like something that might be of interest to you–and why wouldn’t it?–check out OnLive Desktop’s website.