Gizmodo: android netbook

Reports: Acer's Android Netbook Coming Next Month, Still Weighed Down With Windows XP

John Herrman — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:31:55 EDT

Acer disappointed everyone by mandating their Android netbook to dual-boot Windows, but it'll nonetheless be interesting to see an Android-ized netbook, even if it's not as cheap as we'd like. According to Digitimes, we'll find out in August. [Digitimes]

Acer's Android Netbook Will Come With Windows, Fail at Being an "Android Netbook"

John Herrman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:03:21 EDT

When a company says they're working on an Android netbook, people make assumptions: they'll come up with a fresh UI; they'll cater the netbook's hardware to Google's lightweight OS; they'll make it cheap. Acer is doing none of these things.

Their Android netbook will actually be an Windows XP netbook, in that it'll ship in a dual-boot configuration. This sounds harmless enough, but it's not:

[Acer Chairman] Wang pointed out that the dual-OS strategy is much safer for Acer since consumer acceptance of the Android platform is unclear for the time being...Acer will be able to promote Android as a value-added feature, similar to Asustek Computer's Express Gate, to account for any price premium.

To characterize Android as a value-added feature is to miss the point entirely, the point being that Android is free, and XP is not. Bundling a gimpy, largely untouched version of Android into an existing netbook relegates the OS to novelty status, which isn't what we—or any other netbook watchers—had in mind earlier this week. [Digitimes]

Acer Planning an Android Netbook For Q3 of This Year

John Herrman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:15:24 EDT

Acer has become the first company to announce intentions to manufacture an Android netbook, coming by Q3 of this year.

In human terms, that means it'll ship by October, but possibly as early as this month. Their announcement is fairly vague, more of a statement of intention than a product press release. Will it be based on a typical Atom/Intel platform, or look more like the ASUS Snapdragon test unit we saw yesterday? How will they adapt Android's interface to suit netbook use, if at all? The questions! They press! [WSJ]