During my original review, I was using Windows 7 and Splashtop worked like a champ. I loved it and recommended it. Then I upgraded to Windows 8 and started to experience strange issues. After I made sure the issue wasn’t from a misconfiguration, I opened a support ticket with Splashtop (which cost $9.99 when I acquired it mid this year).
Here is the response I received from Splashtop:
Basically to solve my issues, they want me to "upgrade" to Splashtop 2 which has a monthly service fee. No other suggestion was made to fix my issues and they were unwilling to provide an upgrade promo price considering I had paid for their previous product less than 5 months ago.
I have a real issue with a company selling a product known to be inferior. The original Splashtop is still being sold on itunes (albeit now $2.99). They should be honest and clearly warn consumers not to purchase this product if the intended use is with Windows 8. I also hate companies trying to do a "hard sell" as the only solution to my problems. It's really too bad because it worked very well with Windows 7.
I have gone back to my LogMeIn Ignition solution for remote access (which doesn't stream video but has always been rock solid).
My verdict is don't buy Splashtop 1 for use with Windows 8. Splashtop 2 works well on your LAN but if you want to remote access your device via the internet (which is likely why you wanted a remote access solution in the first place) then you have to pay their monthly or annual fee.