OnLive Brings Microsoft Office Support To Android Tablets

OnLive seems to be the only online gaming persona still out there with a cloud focus that's keeping on track, with many other cloud-based gaming outfits folding as demand faltered. But OnLive is branching out into all sorts of new things, including a new Desktop App for Android tablets, which brings full Microsoft Office apps, Adobe Reader and -- with OnLive Desktop Plus service -- gigabit-speed accelerated browsing regardless of the tablet's local Internet speed and local computing capability. It's a free app, and it's out now in the Android Market exclusively for tablets.

It promises Office compatibility that Android users have longed for, and if you pony up the extra $4.99/month for the Plus service, you'll get a presumably better browsing experience. The app is also available on the iPad, and it'll come soon to smartphones, PCs, Macs, TVs and monitors. Running remotely on powerful PCs in the cloud that are connected by Gigabit Ethernet to the Internet, OnLive Desktop utilizes OnLive's patented instant-action cloud gaming technology to deliver a seamless PC application and Web experience, instantly responsive to multi-touch gestures, as well as a full PC on-screen keyboard, handwriting recognition and optional Bluetooth PC-compatible keyboard or mouse.


OnLive Desktop Plus brings the world's fastest browsing experience, whether over Wi-Fi- or 4G LTE-connected Android tablets. Regardless of your local connection speed, even the most complex websites-including ones that would take minutes to load over your local connection-load in seconds, instantly delivering fully interactive animation, video and sound. A 50 megabyte file from cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox) or a 15 megabyte attachment from Web email (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.) can literally download or upload in less than a second, resulting in an utterly transformative Web experience. And, despite the astounding speed improvement, OnLive Desktop Plus can dramatically reduce Web browsing data usage, since only the top layer of the currently visible part of a website is ever sent over the local connection. Essentially, OnLive Desktop delivers only what you can see or hear at a given moment, potentially reducing data usage by a factor of 10 or more.