I use iSSH on my iStuff, and it’s available from the app store. It’s both an ssh terminal, as well as a VNC through ssh. It lets me onto the desktop of any machine in my house. From outside my LAN, I have my router configured to route non-standard ports to the computer I want to connect to. It works pretty well.
As long as your jailbroken and have a player, you probably can. I do know for a fact that files for VLC can be put on via ssh without iTunes. If you’re not comfortable with ssh, there are lots of graphical clients for it.
Not sure about the iPad version of VLC, but the desktop version allows streaming, so I’d wager that the iOS version does. If it doesn’t, there are other media players that will stream from your PC’s. Like I said for streaming, Plex is my favorite (although I also use Plex for HTPC purposes on a couple of other computers).
All of my iDevices are jailbroken. I tried to see how long I could go without jailbreaking the iPad… about 2 weeks. Mainly because I hate how Apple allows you to sync with only one computer. I have three Macs I use regularly, so I SSH files back and forth. SBSettings is a must, as is Intelliscreen, and MyWI.
If you can follow directions and take your time jailbreaking is quite easy. As others have mentioned, it’s virtually impossible to ruin your device (if you really jack things up you may have to do a restore to factory settings).
Oh, and thanks Balthisar for the hints and tips. It is quite tricky to get specific yes/no answers out there in the googleverse so it is always handy to get pointed in the right direction.
I think one of us doesn’t understand the other. I’m not saying that individual applications that require network access (Chrome and Firefox) to be useful will only be useful with a network connection. That’s a given. I’m saying that everything you can do in that Virtual PC relies on the network connection. None of it is running on the iPad. The iPad is just a thin client that communicates with a virtual machine in a server somewhere.
iPad or not, remote access of home computers is pretty common. I have a combined network server and HTPC in my basement that I access via VNC over ssh. It’s always running. I use the dyndns service so that it has a global hostname. The VNC server is built into the OS, although there are free ones available to. There are lots of free VNC clients on all major operating systems. So it works like this: I start an ssh connection using port forwarding, then connect the local VNC client to the now-forwarded localhost port, which gets me to the GUI on the home computer. The router at home is configured to forward the default VNC port (5900) to the server. From the public internet, I can ssh into any of my computers via different ssh ports, and always use VNC port 5900. At work, it’s trickier because only port 23 is open for VNC.
In short, iPad, Windows, Linux, Mac, it doesn’t matter: I can get my home desktop from anywhere in the world that has a decent internet connection. I can kludge actual file transfers via scp (which uses ssh, but isn’t always available on Windows machines).
This used to irritate me, but at home I keep my library mirrored across all of my computers with rsync, which means that I can sync from any computer at any time with no issues. For my phone, it actually works with syncing different information to different libraries, too. For example, for my phone I sync music, podcasts, and apps at home on a Mac, and contacts and calendars at work on a PC. Completely different libraries with no conflicts, but they key is not syncing the same type of information.
I see my last post from my laptop didn’t make it here, but thank you both, Walrus and Balthisar. This VNC business was enough to make me think getting an Ipad 2 is a good enough idea. Since I’m already de facto tech support for grandpa’s PC, I can also just use his router to dial in and fix the problem for him.
I find that VNC can feel annoyingly laggy even from within my LAN. I’m surprised that’s not an even larger problem going through the Internet. I mean, I’ll control a computer from elsewhere when I absolutely need to, but I’d much rather just grab the file and work on it locally.
I’d agree with that, however, it’s nice t know that I have all of the ipad’s toys, and Still have the option to use a real computer in a pinch! Especially for my numerous java apps.
I prefer local work, too. At home my network is pretty quick, but I’m used to VNC’ing between all of the computers prior to having the iPad anyway. From work, I connect at a much lower color depth, since it seems like port 22 is QOS’d very, very low.
