Stream 24-7: Application Streaming

Stream 24-7 wow the future of software. In camparison to softgrid i think this technology is way ahead. No probems using applications with my own computers hardware, it finds my network printers perfect and even my network storage drives which is more than i can same for some virtulization software.

Speedy and smooth delivery of the software. I quite like the idea of paying for this as a service which would allow me to use the same programs on say a laptop while out of the office, no more buying programs and only using them a few times this way you pay for what you want.

Maybe using this service on dial up would not be very helpful however in this day and age dialup is like using a fax instead of an email. With todays wireless networks steadily growing and improving this will not be a problem.

I Will be interested to see what else comes about from this site.

Yes, I have tried it. You need to install an 'application player'. Once that is done then you choose which program you want to try out and it does an initial 'bare bones' install on an o: drive on your computer that gets you up and running.

For example the initial Open Office install takes up 64MB, but the server will report the 'true' size as being 400MB. That took about 3 minutes on 5G ADSL. Once it's there then it appears under Start|Programs exactly like the normal program would and comes up just as quickly as if it was really installed.

As you use it there are some delays when you do tasks that haven't been 'installed', you only get what you need at any particular time, and the player grabs code required from the server but it's tolerable.

The program is sort of 'sandboxed' in that it doesn't alter any of your system settings but has its own local registry and setup area under the o: drive.

You can leave it 'installed' if you expect to use it regularly or you can 'deactivate' it at which point it's completely removed from your computer.

For something like Open Office I'd probably download and install the complete package, however then it's my responsibility to maintain it.

Overall Stream24-7 seems to be a good vehicle for proof of concept for the method of streaming they are using.

In addition it's a good way to try out things quickly without too much hassle or clogging up your computer with leftovers. That might only become useful if they extend the range of programs in their catalog.

Camilla

Hi Todd, I've tried this and it works really well. The applications are streamed to the desktop and interact with it as if locally installed. So its a little different than Softgrid I believe.