Droplet Computing

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I’ve seen a little bit of the future recently and its platform independent. How many times have you wished that application X was available on another OS. I know it’s a massive bone of contention that us Visio doodlers are locked into a Windows operating system to get our fix of documentation fluffage.

While other options are available out there for Mac they all have some major drawback or other which just makes them not so good. It was a mini rant on twitter about this very subject that my attention was drawn to a new startup who are aiming to answer this very problem.

Droplet Computing (link here) have developed a neat bit of software that enables the native use of Windows applications on non-Microsoft Windows platforms without any sort of emulation required. Yes that’s right you can finally use Visio or any other Windows application on Mac and ChromeOS.

This is all made possible by their development of a patent-pending Layer-X technology which allows for the online and offline use of applications that are stored within a container type environment. This also provides the possibility of mobilizing the applications on devices such as secured USB sticks etc.

The applications are delivered through a small application and plugin that launches the Windows applications using the platforms default browser. Despite this and the alien operating system to the application the experience is entirely native, if you want to save a file then just hit file and save and it will save to the OS’s filesystem. Likewise, if you plug in a removable device the experience is native there too.

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This might sound a little like thinapp and the other technologies that have come before it but remember its windows native applications running directly on non windows operating systems. The image below as mentioned previously is Visio running natively upon ChromeOS using DropletComputings technology.

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The possibilities for this technology are huge for both corporate and private usage, providing true application cross platform compatibility across enterprises and for small one or two applications that a home user cannot live without. The technology is currently in a Beta stage and currently works on chrome books with Intel processors but they are expanding this to make it available to all other platforms and they are bridging the gap between Intel and ARM based processors.

They were kind enough to demo their current Beta for me a few weeks ago and it totally blew me away, the performance was native and they have a very aggressive and exciting plan for including new platforms.

I certainly for one will be very glad when I can delete my Windows vm on my Mac which is currently only fired up when Visio is required.

Head on over to http://www.dropletcom.com/ to check it out and sign up to the Beta program.

Author: Dale Scriven

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