Seriously, what isn’t the OnLive team trying these days? First they bring us streaming games to our consoles, then they move it to our tablets and smartphones, and now they’re going ahead and putting Windows on our tablets. So maybe now you’re asking “How does it work?” “Is it fast?” “Is it worth the price?”. I’ll answer all of that in the review.

First off it’s completely free. You don’t necessarily have to purchase anything to use this service. In fact, if you already have an OnLive account, you already have an OnLive desktop account. There ARE pricing options that give you more options; for one, access to Internet Explorer, just in case you need to view something only good’ol IE can view. There is also more storage options (you get 2 gigs free) and the option to install applications (its a business account sort of thing so you need to contact OnLive for that feature). Now that we’ve got the pricing and boring stuff out of the way, let’s see what a free account gets you.

Full access to Microsoft Word, Excell, and PowerPoint. Pretty neat huh? You’re greeted with a Windows 7 UI that’s tailor made for tablets. Everything is single click, and works like a charm with the capacitive touchscreen of an Android Tablet. I ran this on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus btw, Android 3.2 and all that great stuff. Anywho, it runs smoothly enough for something that’s being displayed off of a server.

There are also specific touch based apps developed just for the service; in fact in my video review you can see me actually using one of them. Audio also works on the server and plays out on the tablet; I was able to play one of the sample files on windows media player (I know I know).

All in all this is a pretty interesting concept. While I don’t see myself replacing Docs To Go as my editor of choice when taking class notes or doing a quick paper, if I HAD a 10 inch tablet (like those really nice samsung galaxy tabs or transformer primes with the keyboard dock) then I’d probably get more use out of it. You can connect a bluetooth keyboard and mouse by the way, and they work perfectly well (too bad I didn’t get that in my review). You can check it out by downloading it in the market (link below) but if you’re device isn’t on the officially supported list (it says you need at least a 7 inch device) you can do some Googlin’ and find the apk yourself.

Market Link [OnLive Desktop]