Logmein Ignition for Android Review

As part of our “Android goes to work” series, we have been focusing on how professionals use their Android phones to boost their productivity in the workplace.  The problem is that most of us (at least in London) spend a lot of time outside the office working, whether at client meetings or even working from home to get an extra couple of hours catchup.

Logmein.com has always been one of the top players when it comes to remote access to your computer (Mac and PC). With solutions that cater to remote access, network management and remote support, it was a matter of time before their customers would ask for

The one drawback has always been that in order to access the computers out of the office, I had to either wait till I was home or potentially borrow a clients computer to access mine. ( not very secure!) This is why I am very excited to see that Logmein are now extending into mobile and especially to the Android platform.

Initial Testing

As I already had a logmein account installed on my computer, getting it set up was really easy.  I just put in my standard credentials into the app, and bang I was greeted by my familiar windows 7 login screen.  With one click, my username and password were entered and I was straight into my desktop.   Using the app on 3g or on wifi on the Nexus one is brilliant. Everything pops up really quickly and its a breeze to throw yourself round your familiar desktop on the small screen.  I was able to copy files and view documents on the mobile screen really quickly.  Partner this up with Android dropbox application and you can send files remotely to your phone to download to a local computer via usb. This is thereally a totally new  level of power and control that really creates productive, efficient and functional portable working environments.

How it works

Once you are in the app you are presented with a basic screen, with a few simple icons to help you.  They do a great job in keeping the interface uncluttered and just focus on the bare essentials, which is what a mobile app should do.

You are presented with a a set of 6 icons along the bottom:

• A keyboard- giving you access to shift, ctrl alt, windows and your standard function keys
• second gives you shortcut access to ctrl+alt+del and alt-tab
• third is mouse button- allowing you to switch from right click to left click for tapping
• next two are zoom buttons a
• finally the setting buttons

All about control

The implementation of the remote control of he mouse is quite clever.  Instead of clicking on a point in the screen as you would with a traditional touch screen, the mouse pointer stays in the centre of the screen and you use your finger to move the desktop around in the background.

In addition you can use following controls:

• pinch to zoom in/out
• finger swipe to pan around screen
• single tapping is the same as single clicking your mouse
• double taps are ( you guessed it) double clicks
• 2 finger taps are right clicks
• double tap and slide to drag items
• 2 finger scroll acts like a scroll wheel

Despite this being a first release, already this is an app that has the potential to generate a huge amount of value for both the corporate and personal user.  Although coming in at around £19.00 it might over stretch the personal budget, its bang on mark for the corporate market.  I can personally see IT people, developers or even sales men becoming self reliant when on the road, no longer having to rely on having someone at the office to get things done.

This one firmly for the must have books! It is currently available for purchase from the android market for all handsets with Android 1.5 and later.

Download it by scanning qr code below or following the helpful walkthrough.

Here is a brief video about logmein.com for android

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