OnLive has added a subscription tier to its OnLive Deskop application for the Apple iPad, which now adds Internet Explorer 9 and access to the company’s super-fast cloud internet service.

The OnLive Desktop app first launched in January offering remote access to a full version of Windows 7 (including the in-demand Microsoft Office) through the company’s servers.

The new $5-a-month OnLive Desktop Plus service now brings Internet Explorer 9 functionality, which allows users to access the flash videos and websites that will not play on Apple’s Safari browser.

However, there’s more to this than just another Flash-enabled web browser.

Gigabit internet on your iPad

A subscription will give users priority access to OnLive’s cloud-enhanced web speeds of up to a gigabit. Early tests have revealed download speeds of 650Mbps and upload speeds of 200Mbps.

It works by channeling your connection through OnLive’s mightily impressive servers based in the cloud.

That means, regardless of how fast or slow, your home Wi-Fi connection is, OnLive Desktop Plus’ cloud-accelerated connection will dramatically enhance page-loading and streaming speeds.

It’ll also offer lightning-fast download speeds when opening webmail attachments from Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and transferring files from Dropbox.

Nothing short of breathtaking

“Experiencing a full Flash-enabled Web experience at gigabit speeds on iPad is nothing short of breathtaking, and OnLive Desktop Plus is your ticket to ride,” said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO.

“Combine that with OnLive Desktop’s full-featured Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader PC applications and not only do you have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the world’s most powerful productivity tools literally at your fingertips.”

The company says a launch for UK users is coming soon, as well as versions for Windows, Mac and Android in the not-too-distant future.

What’s the best 13-inch laptop?

The 13-inch laptop has gone on leaps and bounds recently, thanks massively to Intel’s Ultrabook specifications.

At the moment, all Ultrabooks feature 13-inch screens, with 14 and 15-inch models incoming later this year.

In many ways, a 13-inch laptop is the perfect size for a portable PC; they’re not as fiddly and squint-inducing as netbooks, but not as heavy and awkward as a full-on notebook.

The price of these machines is higher than netbooks though, so if your wallet’s feeling the strain we recommend you take a look at our guide to the 15 best netbooks in the world today.

Or for a broader view, look at our 20 best laptops in the world today. But whatever you do, read on to find our favourite 13-inchers of the past few months – all in price order.

1. HP Envy 13 – £533

HP’s Envy cost a whopping £1499 when we reviewed it, and we rightly criticised it for being far too expensive. Now that price has dropped to under £1000, making it a worthy competitor to Apple’s 13-inch MacBook. Like the MacBook, it sports a quality build, lozenge-type keys, a lovely screen and a dedicated graphics card. Unfortunately, battery life isn’t that great, but if you fancy buying something of Apple’s inscrutable quality without the Apple branding, look no further.

Read our HP Envy 13 review

2. Acer Aspire S3 – £680

Acer’s take on the Intel Ultrabook specifications may not be quite as skinny as half-sister company Asus’ Zenbook, but the price is certainly slimmed down. Packed with a Core i7 processor and 4GB of memory, the Aspire S3 proved a capable multi-tasker able to run powerful photo and video editing software. The keyboard is impressive for such a slim machine, and we were impressed by just how quietly it ran. 149 minutes of battery life won’t see you taking it on extended trips, but the price and form factor makes it an ideal first venture into the Ultrabook market.

Read our Acer Aspire S3 review

3. Lenovo IdeaPad U300S – £893

Sitting firmly between other Ultrabooks in terms of both price and performance, Lenovo’s IdeaPad still proved that Intel’s specifications make for versatile and powerful little lappies. Lenovo has prioritised business use on the IdeaPad, so you’ll find a comfortable keyboard and matt screen. While the latter may not be ideal for photos and movies, it’s perfect for working outside or in the glare of the sun. Long battery life and low weight make it great for long business trips, and while the design is nothing special it’s still head and shoulders above non-Ultrabook laptops.

Read our Lenovo IdeaPad U300S review

4. Toshiba Satellite Z830-10U – £900

Toshiba’s Ultrabook somehow includes a sub-woofer, an ethernet port and three USB ports in a package that weighs a mere 1.1kg and is just 16mm wide at its thickest point. The miracle of micro-engineering comes at a cost, though: it’s one of the flimsier Ultrabooks we’ve looked at. It’s not quite as powerful as other Ultrabooks we’ve looked at, although it proved perfectly adequate for photo editing and was quick to boot up and shut down. Battery life impressed, too, and we reckon it’ll last a full day of real-world use.

Read our Toshiba Satellite Z830-10U review

5. Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011) – £942

Intel’s Ultrabooks may have Apple’s 13-inch ultraportable firmly in their sights, but they still have quite a fight on their hands. The MacBook Pro’s handsome looks make everything else look a little bit pathetic, and the buttonless touchpad is one of the best we’ve ever seen. This update includes a faster processor and larger hard drive, on top of standard Mac-centric luxuries like a backlit keyboard, an excellent screen and an HD webcam.

Read our Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (Late 2011) review

6. Asus Zenbook UX31 – £1,000

An incredible introduction to Intel’s Ultrabook specification, Asus’ Zenbook is a draw-droppingly well-designed piece of kit. It draws favourable comparisons to Apple’s MacBook Air, with an ultra-slim form factor (just 17mm at its widest point when closed) and distinctive concentric design on the lid. Add to this powerful components, long battery life and excellent sound, and you’ve got an immensely capable little laptop. The fact that the biggest problem we had was with the trackpad buttons says it all here, really.

Read our Asus Zenbook UX31 review

7. Dell XPS 13 – £1,000

The Dell XPS 13 makes its debut in March and it looks like a cracker. The first thing that strikes you about the XPS 13 is how compact it is. Despite it being a 13-inch display, the 31.6 x 20.5 cm footprint is narrow and Dell makes no secret of its desire to be smaller than the 13-inch MacBook Air but with a similar screen size. It’s thin, too, with a 6-18mm footprint and is a gorgeous-looking device. Our previous Ultrabook design best has to be the Asus Zenbook but the Dell XPS 13 really cuts it. It looks the part and feels it too at 1.4Kg.

Read our hands on: Dell XPS 13 review

8. Samsung 9 Series – £1,300+

Although we’ve reviewed the old model – check out our Samsung 9 Series review – we got hands on with its successor at CES 2012. The original Series 9 was one of the world’s thinnest laptops, but Samsung has managed to shave another 4mm from its size-zero body, and the updated 13″ model measures just 12.9mm when closed. The 15-inch version measures just 15mm, and one certainly gets the impression that Samsung wants to prove a point to the Ultrabook crowd. Duralumin, the tough alloy used on the original model, has been axed – possibly because it was prone to scratches – and replaced by standard aluminium, which feels much more resilient, and should stand up to contact with other items in your bag.

Read our Hands on: Samsung 9 Series review

9. Sony VAIO Z Series – £1,931

Just under £2,000 is a lot to spend on a laptop, especially one so small. But this Sony VAIO is basically a desktop in a tiny laptops’ clothing, and it includes a proper desktop Core i7, 6GB of DDR3 RAM and an Nvidia GT 330M graphics chip. You needn’t worry about this beefy setup draining the battery, either: we got a decent 285 minutes out of it. It’s all wrapped up in VAIO’s exquisite style and rugged build quality, and the screen is a sight to behold. As we said in our review, “this is easily one of the best laptops you can currently buy.”

Read our Sony VAIO VPC-Z12V9E/X review

The Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic take the acclaimed Apple iPod Earphones and add a control capsule, located on the cable of the right earpiece, that includes a microphone and three buttons.

Here’s what you can do with this convenient remote:

• Adjust the volume by pressing the + and – buttons
• Control music and video playback – including play/pause and next/previous – by pressing the centre button
• Record voice memos on supported devices
• Answer and end calls

And today you can get these earphones for for £12, saving 53% off the normal price pf £25.99.

Head over to TechRadar Deals to take advantage of this offer, but hurry – there are only 200 pairs available.

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This new and exciting service, open to our UK users, is designed to bring you massive discounts on all sorts of products, services and events that are highly relevant to tech and gadget fans.

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The imminent BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 adds the missing messaging apps to RIM’s tablet, but it also marks a big shift in how BlackBerry devices handle email.

RIM is moving on from the proprietary email system that’s been the foundation of its success in business and is joining Google and Apple in adopting a mobile email protocol from Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean BlackBerry is abandoning its trademark security or long battery life.

With the PlayBook 2.0 – and future BlackBerry 10 handsets – you won’t have to run a wizard on the device and connect to the BlackBerry service to set up your email any more.

Instead, you just fill in the email address and password for your email account, like any other device. If it’s a common email service – or any server you’ve used with a BlackBerry device before – that’s all you need to do.

If you’re connecting to a work email account, you can click Advanced and fill in the details of the server, but it’s still far simpler.

EAS support

But the PlayBook doesn’t connect directly to the mail service. BlackBerry software head Vivek Bhardwaj told TechRadar that PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 still take advantage of the BlackBerry infrastructure and servers but things are a lot easier.

“I can put in my Gmail account and what we do in the background is take the username and read the domain [from the email address] and we do all the heavy lifting to get the settings and do all the configuration and send that back down to the device.”

The PlayBook works with standard mail protocols such as IMAP and POP3, but it also supports the popular EAS protocol.

This was developed by Microsoft (originally for Exchange; it stands for Exchange Active Services) but it’s been widely licensed, and is used by Gmail and Yahoo as well as Hotmail. It’s already supported by the majority of smartphones – Android, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile, Nokia, Palm and even iPhones.

In fact, RIM has been the only holdout, and currently you have to install third-party email tools such as AstraSync to use EAS on a BlackBerry handset or tablet.

Switching to EAS instead of RIM’s proprietary push email transport is a major change, and it’s something of a coup for Microsoft, especially when Bhardwaj praises it as an open standard.

“This is a shift in architecture, based on what we want to deliver as a company. The BlackBerry Internet Service and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server have served us well for the last decade.

“Over time, more consumers have latched on to smartphones, and enough of the industry is at that tipping point so we do need to be about standards. It’s about open standards and an open ecosystem.”

Get email faster

EAS has some major advantages. It’s a proper push protocol that copes with multiple email folders. Mail will arrive on a device using EAS when it arrives on the server. That’s a big improvement over the 15 minutes you wait to check for new emails you get with BIS today (the way any BlackBerry that’s not managed by a business gets email).

Emails you read and delete on your phone will be marked as read or deleted if you look at your mail on the web. This happens with BlackBerry devices today, if you have it set up correctly.

But messages you read in webmail or with another client will be marked as read on your BlackBerry as well, which doesn’t always happen using the current system.

And while there will probably be a setting to choose whether to download the whole of really long messages, you won’t only get the first 2K of each message. That should mean no more scrolling down to the More prompt and waiting for the rest of the message to arrive.

You’ll finally also get your contacts and calendar details synced from your email or calendar service directly to the PlayBook or BlackBerry 10 smartphone, even if you’re not connected to an enterprise BlackBerry system.

Secure and energy efficient

But what about the real advantages of BIS and BES: the security and power efficiency?

Mail will be just as secure, promises Bhardwaj. “The device talks EAS but we wrap security around it. The messages go through a secure tunnel that’s created by BIS or BES, but the transport inside it is EAS.”

Businesses still get to manage BlackBerry devices and control settings on them as well.

And it’s the connection between the server and the phone that keeps power use low (and compresses the data sent back and forth), which still uses the BlackBerry system. If battery life changes for BlackBerry 10, we wouldn’t point the finger at the mail connection.

Loosening the connection between BlackBerry devices and the BlackBerry servers might have other advantages too. It’s no longer one person, one BlackBerry, talking only to a BlackBerry server. PlayBook is going to get BBM (just not in this update).

Could this open up the possibility of BBM coming to other devices that aren’t BlackBerry? We don’t know, but it’s a tempting idea.

A photograph from The Daily newspaper showing a version of Microsoft Office running on the Apple iPad is a fake, Redmond says.

In Tuesday’s edition, the iPad-only paper claimed it had gone hands-on with a working prototype, featuring Word, Excel and Powerpoint in one complete application.

The report asserted that Microsoft had completed design work on the suite, which would soon be submitted to the App Store for approval.

However, the software giant has issued a statement saying the report is inaccurate speculation, while the photograph illustrating The Daily’s report is a fake.

Daily denial

A spokesperson said: “The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation,” while a separate rep told Zdnet the photo is not a picture of a real Microsoft software product.

Microsoft, which is definitely developing the suite for Windows 8 tablets also refused to be drawn on whether it’s even working on a version for the iPad.

In a further twist, on Tuesday evening, The Daily’s editor told Zdnet’s Mary-Jo Foley on Twitter: “We didn’t fabricate either image. A working version of the app was demonstrated to us by someone at Microsoft.”

The plot thickens, but one thing is for sure: Someone’s telling porkies.