A Third Party Solution for Android on PC

Bluestacks running Launcher Pro on Windows

In the latest release of Mac OS X called Lion, Apple was able to bridge the gap between their mobile operating system and their desktop operating system.  Although there are over 250 new features available in Lion, the one that was the most interesting for a lot of people was the debut of the Mac App store and the ability to not only run many of their favorite mobile apps but also to be able to run them full screen.  Microsoft is aiming to do the exact same thing in the upcoming release of Windows 8 which takes the Metro User Interface and the best aspects of Windows Phone 7 to the desktop.  Google however, has not decided to bring the advantages of Android to PCs.  While Android can be run in an emulator, this is done mostly for development purposes and is often quite buggy.  To aid Android enthusiasts in bringing the best apps from their phone or tablet to their PC and eventually their Mac, Bluestacks has released the free alpha version of their Bluestacks App Player for Windows.  While only an initial release, Bluestacks already presents a slew of substantial features and offers users the ability to sync apps from their mobile device to their computer.

To begin using Bluestacks, first download the PC client and install it on your computer.  Instead of installing as an ordinary Windows program, the PC client installs as a gadget on your desktop.  Bluestacks comes with ten preinstalled apps and in order to open them just double click on the android on your desktop and a window displaying all of your apps will appear.  From there a double click on any of the apps will bring you into a full screen view of the app which you can interact with using your mouse.  If you have given Angry Birds a try in Google's Chrome web store you will be very familiar with these controls.  After installing the PC client on your computer make sure to install the Bluestacks Cloud Connect app onto your Android phone.  This free companion app allows you to sync any compatible app from your phone to your PC.  When I tested the program not all of the apps I tried to sync worked successfully but considering this is a first release, the apps that did work performed very well.  Once you have your favorite apps synced it is time to start using Bluestacks.  The interface is fairly easy to use and it allows you to launch and close applications and provides a zoom option which lets you view your apps in fullscreen mode.  Another nice touch is that Bluestacks is compatible with many Android Launchers.  Since the program itself doesn't give you all of the options available in Android, installing a launcher is a nice way to easily customize your Android PC experience in much the same way that you can on an Android phone.

Where Bluestacks really excels is in giving you the ease of use that comes with reading your news from an app as opposed to a website.  A great deal of news sites require you to continue reading a news article on a different page but in an app these page breaks appear as continuous text thus making it easier to enjoy the content.  Overall the program does run a great deal of Android apps and down the road with further releases more and more apps will be compatible with the program.  As a first start at running Android apps outside the Android emulator for developers, Bluestacks has done a tremendous job and has bridged a gap for Google that Microsoft and Apple have already integrated into their user experiences.
 Bluestacks PC Client, Bluestacks Cloud Connect App