OK, folks—this is something seriously cool. Over at The Next Web (and Liliputing, and probably a million other tech-obsessed sites and blogs by the end of the day), there’s a recently-published post about a new app known as WindowsAndroid that actually allows you to run an Android operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, to be specific) “as a native application on your Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 machine,” according to the TNW post.

A Beijing-based startup called SocketeQ is the company responsible for the app; you’ll want to head over to their site in order to grab the download form and installer, both of which you’ll need if you want to get started. (“The whole process of signing up, downloading, and installing should take you less than 15 minutes,” according to TNW reporter . “If you don’t have a touchscreen, you can use your mouse to navigate the interface.”)

And just in case you were curious, Protalinski poins out that WindowsAndroid offers an experience far superior to that of the similar service offered by the Bay Area-based BlueStacks. Why? “WindowsAndroid allows you not only to execute Android apps on your Windows computer,” says E.P., “but also use the browser, not to mention every other component of the operating system.”

Sweet!

I haven’t actually gone through the installation process yet, but if anyone out there has, we would genuinely love to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Also, if you’d like to have a rough idea of what this process might actually look like on your own machine, here’s a Chinese-made video (linked to from the SocketeQ site, so I’d assume it’s safe) that shows the porting of Android 2.3 to Windows 7.

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  1. It would be interesting to know whether this is an emulator or something different. An ancient principle of computing states that any processor can emulate any other processor (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator) and there are emulators available for many systems ranging from Atari to Newton (Einstein). Of particular interest here might be Einstein (http://code.google.com/p/einstein/) so that one might experience what it was like to read a NewtonBook.

  2. I’d love to send over some screen shots. Of course first, they’d have to email me the download link. I’m still waiting, and I requested it right after I made my post. Their site did take forever to load. I’m guessing they are swamped. I’m going to try again with another email. If at first you don’t succeed, try again!

  3. I like this a lot but it is very buggy for me at the moment. Running on Windows 7. Lots of errors when trying to do just about anything. The “security” tab in settings won’t open to allow unknown software to be installed also. The only app that installed was Astro File Manager it worked the first few times but then it started having errors also. I got tired of messing with it at the time. Hopefully this will get a following and there will be a place to discuss and fix problems. I would really like for this to work well.

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