So, you or your kids are jealous because their friends and co-workers have an IPad and you don’t. Sad Clown.

Intel’s AppUp might just be your fix. Intel has created both an application center as well as an app store to provide small applications to Windows. Many of the popular apps from Apple’s App Store are available here as well. Take for example Angry Birds, the physics based game is now available. While targeting NetBooks, you can run the application on any computer that has a supported operating system.

The application center is available for Windows XP, Windows 7 and Moblin. You can find the installer on their main page. http://www.appup.com/

Once you have installed the AppUp application you need to register. You do not need to register a credit card if you are only going to download free applications.

The AppUp store is friendly enough. While it doesn’t have the polish of the Apple app store, it is functional. Installing applications might prompt you with a User Access Control window asking whether you want this application to modify your system if you are running on Windows 7. This can be somewhat cryptic since the applications being installed aren’t named with the application’s title. You can click on the “show details” drop down at the bottom of the window to get more details on the application.This should include the Intel AppUp name somewhere in the path to the download.

After installing the application, you simply click on the applications icon in the My Apps tab.

Please leave a comment if you have a favorite application.