PC fix for tablets

So you love your iPad, but you wish you could work on Microsoft Office software, watch Flash video and generally have more of a PC-like experience? OnLive Desktop is one way you can. OnLive is best known for a streaming video-game service that works much the way Netflix delivers movies over the internet. Instead of buying games to run on your computer or game console at home, you pay OnLive a subscription fee. The games run off OnLive's remote servers and respond almost instantly to your controls at home. What you'd normally see if you were running the game at home is instead streamed to you over the internet, just like a movie.OnLive Desktop does something similar, but with a suite of Windows-based Microsoft Office programs. Essentially, remote servers do all the work, and OnLive's app shows a virtual desktop on your iPad or Android tablet. Because there's no storage on the tablet, everything works fast. On an iPad 2, the OnLive Desktop app gives you access to Microsoft software such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as Adobe Reader and a few other programs. You don't need to already own these programs. You can't add other software to the virtual desktop, however. The system is wiped clean each time you use it, though OnLive offers you a way to save document files to access later. Booting up takes you to a familiar Windows screen. The touch-screen keyboard is similar, but there are a few changes from the native iPad keyboard, including the ability to use the ‘control' and ‘alt' keys as shortcuts to copy and paste. OnLive syncs easily to a Bluetooth keyboard, which would be handy for typing out lengthy documents. Upgrade option When you save documents to the app, it syncs the documents with the remote servers. For $4.99 a month you can upgrade to OnLive Desktop Plus, which adds web browsing with Internet Explorer. Besides letting you access websites, the browser gives you more ways to store documents, as you'll have access to email and storage services such as Dropbox. You can also watch Flash video and animation, something you can't do consistently on Android devices or at all on the iPad's web browsers.