I recalled once I forgot to switch off my computer before leaving for a short trip. I was already on the way to airport, so I just left my computer turned on until I returned home. It was not a big deal except it’s not very environmental friendly. Now, with LogMeIn and iPhone, I can remotely control my home computer and shut it down (or do whatever I want) even I am miles away from home.
LogMeIn is not a new iPhone application and has been available on App Store for several months. I, however, only got a chance to test out the application until recently. In short, it’s pretty cool!
LogMeIn is a remote access and control application for both PC and Mac that allows you to remotely control any computer (with LogMeIn software installed) from anywhere via a secure connection. LogMeIn Ignition adds the ability to control a PC or Mac from your iPhone. To use LogMeIn on iPhone, you need to setup a free LogMeIn account for your PC or Mac. Then you also need to install the LogMeIn application on your computer. Of course, you have to install LogMeIn Ignition via App Store [iTunes link].
With all things prepared, you can launch LogMeIn Ignition on iPhone. First, you’ll need to authenticate to LogMeIn secure server with the free LogMeIn account. Once logon, the app shows you all the remote computers that you can access. Say, for me, I register two computers for remote access. One is my mum’s PC and the other is my Mac. As you can see, LogMeIn automatically detects if your computer is online or not. By tapping on my Mac, it brings me to access my Mac from iPhone and further I need to key in the logon account of my own computer.
With successful logon, LogMeIn shows a scaled-down version of the entire screen of the remote computer. I can rotate iPhone sideway to enjoy a wider screen. I can also pinch to zoom-in to enlarge a portion of the screen and just use my finger to navigate it. It’s very much like navigating a web page in Safari. However, it takes some time for me to get used to the navigation. When scroll through the screen, I’m not actually moving the mouse cursor. Instead, I’m moving the entire screen while the cursor is kept static. In practice, to launch an application on the remote computer, move the screen until you have the cursor placed over the application icon. Double tap on the icon, as if you’re using a mouse, to start the application.
When you need to key in a command or type anything on a document, LogMeIn also comes with a virtual keyboard. Simply tap the keyboard icon of the menu bar at the bottom of screen to invoke the virtual keyboard. It’s a standard keyboard as you see in other iPhone applications. But it adds some extra keys to give you a better control of your remote computer. LogMeIn comes with Ctrl, Alt, and Cmd keys, available at the top of the screen. Also, you can tap on an icon to switch to function keys and other extended keyboard keys. I tried to write my blog post remotely and key in my post tag. Yes, it just works. But it’s too tedious to control my Mac and type my blog post with the virtual keyboard.
Theoretically, you can use any remote application on iPhone. You can launch Firefox and access Flash webpage. You can manipulate the system preference. Or you can open your Word document and write your essay. Even, you can access YouTube.com via a web browser and view the video. 
However, given the limited size of iPhone’s screen, it’s not very practical to do all kinds of thing remotely on iPhone. In practice, I think LogMeIn Ignition is primarily used for support purpose or lets you handle any ad-hoc issues while you’re on-the-go. Just like what I mentioned in the very beginning, I need to shutdown my computer remotely! At that time, that’s perfect if I have LogMeIn for iPhone.
I tested the app on both 3G and WiFi. The performance over WiFi is pretty good and quite responsive. When I’m on 3G to access my Mac remotely, it takes much longer time to load the entire screen, though it’s still acceptable. For iPhone user who’s still using EDGE, I don’t recommend you to use this app. It’s just too slow.
Overall, this app is great. The downside of LogMeIn, however, is its hefty price point – selling at US$29.99. While most iPhone apps cost under $10 with a majority of apps selling at US$0.99, LogMeIn Ignition is definitely one of the expensive one of the expensive iPhone applications. Probably, the application is not target for general user but those support professionals who need to provide all-time technical support.
All in all, LogMeIn offers an impressive remote control ability for your iPhone. I have tested out other remote control applications such as MochaVNC. LogMeIn is very user friendly and stable. It hides all technical details for general users to access the computer remotely. You don’t have to know about the IP address of the remote PC. You only need an LogMeIn account and manage multiple computers remotely. If you’re looking for a remote control application for your iPhone, take a look and consider to get a copy of LogMeIn.
Share with Your FriendsWhat's Next?
If you find the post is useful, subscribe to Simon Blog using RSS or Email to get free iPhone updates. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter or join us on Facebook.
Related Post you'll like:- Remote v1.1 to cover iTunes 8.0’s Genius feature
- How To Use Veency to Remote Control your iPhone
- Preview: Nam’s Remote brings Universal Remote Control to iPhone
- Remote Control your iTunes using iPhone 2.0
- 5-Row QWERTY Keyboard for iPhone
Loading ...
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, this is a pretty cool app, and the best part is that it set up itself.One thing under ignition options you can choose to move the mouse cursor and not the whole screen,i think its easier this way.Nice blog thx.
Must the host computer (mac) and client device (iPhone) be connected to the Internet for this to work, or will the set up work in an ad-hoc wifi setup between devices?
Hi Simon
Thanks for this tip. I also baulked at the $29.99 (or £17.99 here) price, and wondered if I could achieve the same result for free.
Well, it seems you can – using a program called NTRconnect (on the server – available in PC, Mac and Linux flavours) and NTRconnect viewer (on the iPhone – from AppStore). For the first thirty days you get the ‘all bells and whistles’ version, then after that unless you cough up $9.99/month you get downgraded to the basic version. The main thing you lose by not doing that seems to be file transfer; you also lose the ability to access more than two computers and a host of security functions that I suspect are really only of interest to corporate IT bods.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
{ 1 trackback }