While I hate to complain about Android apps being made more widely available to consumers, I have to say I'm a little bummed to see that the admittedly ambiguous teaser that ASUS put out last week was apparently only pointing to BlueStacks integration and not a true, dual-booting tablet.
Fortunately I recover quickly from disappointment, so let's go ahead and take a peek at what ASUS and BlueStacks are bringing to the table.
You might remember BlueStacks as we have covered them a couple times here. First in October of last year when they demoed their alpha software and then again in January of this year when they announced support for Windows 8.
Their main product is known as "App Player for PC" and, as you have no doubt already surmised, it allows you to use Android apps on your Windows PC. BlueStacks in this case is just going to be more deeply integrated with ASUS by tying into the asus@vibe service which you can check out here. It's basically a digital content hub for ASUS owners which currently offers music, games, books, magazines, radio and videos.
Now I'm sure we will hear more details tomorrow, but there are two big questions for me at the moment.
The first is understanding the costs associated with this as the press release merely indicates that "users of asus@vibe will enjoy Android apps for free for 6 months, with the option to upgrade to unlimited apps and sync apps from phone to PC."
The second is, what hardware will ASUS be putting out that will maximize the utility of this partnership? It may be less exciting (to me anyway) than a dual-booting tablet, but if ASUS can deliver an awesome Windows 8 tablet which can leverage this BlueStacks integration, that could still get my attention.
The ASUS press conference kicks off at 1:30 p.m. tomorrow which, due to the miracles of time travel
