Today Microsoft released a preview of their new service RemoteIE. This service is a way to remote test Internet Explorer on different devices like Windows, iOS, Android and Mac. RemoteIE is built on Azure Remote App.

After downloading the RDP client from the Mac App Store I signed on with my Microsoft Id. An invitation was presented and I accepted and started a new session. Basically this is a remote session using a Microsoft RDP client connection to a virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 R2 on Azure.

The logon took some time before an Internet Explorer window became visible.

The performance was quite good for casual web surfing.

It’s even possible to use RemoteIE for playing Youtube videos with acceptable frame rate and with good sound.

Main usage for this service is probably going to be for developers and testers testing future versions of IE without having the latest bits installed locally. This is great for Mac or Linux users who would like to test against IE.

There is a drawback, sessions idle after 10 minutes and can only last for 60 minutes.

Read about RemoteIE on Techcrunch.