BlueStacks, Android Apps On Windows Now Compatible With XP, Vista
With so many new and exciting apps coming out for mobile operating systems like Apple's iOS or Google's Android, it only is natural that some users want those apps to work on their desktop PCs as well. Maybe they want to utilize the bigger screen of their computer system, show off an app or device, or have access to an app even when their mobile phone is not in reach or accessible.
BlueStacks offers a solution for Windows based computer systems. It was first only compatible with Windows 7, the latest version released a few days ago added support for XP and Vista as well.
When you install BlueStacks on your computer an icon is added to the upper right screen of the operating system. This icon acts as the central hub. Here you can start Android applications, open the help file or the BlueStacks website to load additional apps on the computer.
The free version ships with ten preinstalled apps. It offers room for additional apps (The (changing) start page states the free version is limited to 26 additional apps) that can be installed from a list of featured apps on the BlueStacks homepage or by installing a BlueStacks client on the Android mobile which can then be used to push Android apps directly to the Windows PC. These apps appear in the hub listing after a short period of time.
Available preinstalled are mostly game apps like Aporkalypse or Drag Racing. The featured apps section on the BlueStacks homepage, only accessible after connecting a Facebook account with the service, lists more games and some news related apps.
More interesting that the featured or preinstalled apps is the ability to push existing Android apps from your phone to your PC to access them on Windows. The developers say that not all apps may work at the current point in time.
Apps that work are launched in fullscreen. Take a look at the following videos to get a better expression.
The developers are continuing to work on the application. It will eventually reach beta and then final status. The plan of the company from what I can see is to keep offering the free version of the software with limited app storage space, and a professional version with unlimited space that is likely going to cost either a flat sum of money or a subscription fee.
Windows users can download the latest version of BlueStacks from the project website. Windows XP users should take a look at the prerequisite page before they install the software to make sure they have all the software installed on their system that is required to run BlueStacks.
Android users, have you tried the BlueStacks App Player yet? If so, what's your opinion?
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I have tried Bluestacks before and experience the same scenario as The apps I can use is so limited, there’s a nice app that runs ANY android app on Windows called “Youwave Android” . .Try it, thats much much better than bluestacks . . cheers!
I’ve liked the IDEA of BlueStacks from the git-go; but I don’t like that I’m limited to just its apps. The far better way to do it is to provide all its apps, as it now does, but also allow installation of actual Android apps. Of course, some wouldn’t work because of the phone specificity of them; plus there are Android phone simulators for Windows out there…
…one of which, it’s worthy of note, put one helluva virus on my machine a year or so ago… it was an Adobe Air app… made me mad as hell; and the company — a large one, I should point out — which made made the app wouldn’t even respond to my emails telling them about it, and asking for an explanation… as if pretending it just never happened was the right approach.
[sigh] Oh, well. [shakes head in disbelief]
BlueStacks, in any case, is still cool. Glad to see it’s now available for Vista and XP. Might as well share the mysery, I always say. [grin]
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Gregg DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
I should add that, yes, I saw that one can install regular apps from one’s Android phone. I mostly meant, in my immediately-previous, that they should be installable directly from BlueStacks. It shouldn’t be too hard to write it so that it fools the Android Market, or AppBrain into believing that it’s an Adroid phone. It would need to do that anyway, to make most of the extended Android apps work, as alluded to in the article.
The notion of reversing the process… pushing apps from the phone to the Windows machine, instead of the other way around, as we’re now used to, has a convolutedly delicious irony to it, though, doesn’t it.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Good one but I have read about it at AskVG.com.
But thanks for updating me with Windows XP and Vista compatibility.