Just in case you were wondering, yes, ore excited about the prospect of running Android apps on their full-sized computer. BlueStacks, the startup software package that lets you easily run and sync Android apps to any Windows computer, has racked up more than half a million downloads since its  October debut. 550,000 downloads is an impressive achievement for a program that was only released in alpha form seven weeks ago, and at the time lacked support for anything other than Windows 7.

Investors have started to sit up and take notice. Embattled chip maker AMD and virtualization/remote access company Citrix invested 6.4 million dollars into the small California startup to spur its development, and presumably highlight it for future products. With Microsoft on the verge of a big tablet push in late 2012/early 2013, having quick and easy access to hundreds of thousands of touch-enabled Android apps would be a boon for Windows 8.

The software itself is still in the early stages, with the basic version of the BlueStacks App Player in alpha and the Pro version, featuring unlimited paid app syncing, still unavailable. The software itself is Windows-only, and likely to remain that way for some time, considering the high hardware requirements. BlueStacks may have some exciting things to announce at CES in January – we’ll be on hand to see if this is the case.

[via TechCrunch]