JPJones.co.uk

So one use I’ve wanted from my iPad since I bought it has been to use it as an extra screen for my PC Laptop.

My setup at work is pretty decent already – a large 24″ monitor and my Vaio Z11 laptop, but being a major Internet user + coder, no matter how much screen real estate you’ve got, you always want more.

I’ve been a big fan (and long time user – since 2005 in fact) of MaxiVista - a utility which allows you to use the screens of several networked PCs and combine them into one huuuuge desktop. It’s worked fantastically well for pure desktop-based applications, but has sort of got lost a little these days since the introduction of multiple graphics cards support multiple monitors per card..

Well, yesterday, MaxiVista for iPad was approved by Apple and released into the App Store. What does it do? Converts your iPad into an extra monitor. How? Well, keeping it to the basics, you install a display driver on your PC, reboot, download the app onto your iPad, and then hook the two up to the same network. There’s a taskbar app which runs on the PC which auto-detects the iPad instance, and then gives you your extra monitor.

Performance isn’t amazing, at least not in my office where I’ve been using it extensively for the last couple of days, and so screen refreshes can be a little slow, but I’ve yet to play with the settings to find the best performance. What settings are available? You can alter the packet size, graphics tile szle, compression method and jpg compression level – thats right, jpg. It works similar to VNC – breaks up the screen into tiles, compresses the individual tiles and then sends them over the network to the iPad, where its decompressed and put into the correct tile position.

The other downside is that it running on an iPad – you’d half expect to be able to interact with the contents of the screen through the power of touch. Not yet, although MaxiVista have stated on their FAQ that they are planning to add remote control capabilities in the future.

So what do I run on my extra display? I’ve found it really useful to put my IM windows on there whilst working away, to use it as a display for my servers’ status report graphs, and I’ve found Spotify on the iPad display really looks great in full screen mode (as can be seen below).

What does this great utility cost? £5.99 – direct from the App Store.