Acer Launching Dual Android/Windows 7 Netbook

Barence writes "Acer has unveiled an Aspire netbook that dual boots Google Android and Windows 7. 'User demand is not there for [other forms of] Linux [but] we never give up. We adjust,' said Jim Wong, Acer senior corporate vice president. 'We introduce Android with the Windows OS, and why Android? Because it has the best connectivity built into the OS.' Acer has also talked up Google's forthcoming Chrome OS. 'Chrome can be a viable alternative to Microsoft's OSes for web applications on different mobile devices,' he explained."

Comments

From the article

[sopssa]

"The Android browser offers most of the things people need. But I think today IE is still dominating the online world, a lot of websites are still optimised for IE"

This is probably just some intranet sites inside companies or schools. Chrome and other browsers should be just fine for all web browsing (though yeah, sometimes I do need to switch to IE for some site to work - but it's not often)

Interesting thing is that Android is also available for PC's. Can it be downloaded from somewhere?

Re:From the article

[lordandmaker]

http://www.androidx86.org/

Re:From the article

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only seen it as a LiveCD, which you can get here. Havn't played myself, so not sure if you can install or not, but worth a look.

http://code.google.com/p/live-android/

Re:From the article

[ircmaxell]

That line shouldn't be "a lot of websites are still optimised for IE"...

It should be "a lot of websites are still spending hours upon hours trying to function correctly with IE"

Re:From the article

[IBBoard]

Either that or 1) they're old and haven't been updated in ages, 2) use ugly table layouts that work okay in IE6 or 3) use properitary tags that only work in IE (also known as "old ASP/ASP.Net code" or "Frontpage Code", which were ugly as hell).

Linux

[jackharrer]

Wouldn't be better to offer fast booting Linux (Moblin?) and dual boot with Win? Then users can access nice and quick Linux environment or wait for Win if they "really" need Office.

Android is good for phones, but that's how far it goes...

Re:Linux

[BadAnalogyGuy]

If you're going to propose that Moblin is somehow better than Android for non-phone devices, it would be nice to have some backup information to prove your point.

The fact of the matter is that Linux is not designed to be an embedded OS, and the efforts that Moblin and Linux are making are significant but not wholly complete. When, as you say, the OS boots faster, is transparent, and exists invisibly to users (though clearly to developers), then we will have a true "mobile Linux" distribution.

Acer seems to be tempting fate here and begging Microsoft to raise their licensing costs. If they pass their costs onto consumers, will their cheap hardware keep prices low enough to attract customers, even with the higher-priced desktop OS? I don't know, but it seems very dangerous for them to be making such claims at this point.

Re:Linux

[Enderandrew]

The fact of the matter is that Linux is not designed to be an embedded OS [..]

Why exactly is Linux running on my TV, on cell phones, on coffee machines, ATMs, kiosks, web servers smaller than my coffee mug, etc?

Oh wait, Linux has been a fantastic OS for embedded systems from day 1 because of how modular the kernel is.

Are you suggesting the Linux desktop isn't great on embedded devices? In that case, no desktop is perfect for embedded devices. However, every major desktop to market now has taken touchscreens in consideration for their UI. KDE 4 runs great on the Nokia n900.

Android was designed EXCLUSIVELY for small, embedded devices and works great.

I'm sorry, what exactly was your point again?

From the article - wtf?

[sensei moreh]

So why Windows? "A lot of the time people are using netbook for their productivity too," explained Wong, "and under Windows they have better productivity and also a better browsing experience with IE [Internet Explorer]."

Better productivity? I suppose that may be true if you're tied to Windows apps. But a better browsing experience with IE? All I can respond with is, "wtf?"

Re:From the article - wtf?

[Tubal-Cain]

But a better browsing experience with IE?All I can respond with is, "wtf?"

Indeed. My IE experience is much nicer in Linux than it is on Windows.

Wow really?

[aceofspades1217]

The key reason he used for keeping windows around was productivity and IE....

I mean there are plenty of reasons for keeping windows around such as gaming, users are used to it, etc.

But productivity and IE? I really don't know anyone who has used other brothers and still says that IE is a better browser, its basically that people just don't know about other browsers. As for productivity that is so far gone I can barely even respond to that...one word. "Openoffice" schools and businesses have been using it for years.

Re:Wow really?

[rmcd]

I have a thinkpad with ubuntu so I use Openoffice (3.1) a lot. My daughter is very happy with it for high school homework, but I honestly can't recommend it to anyone doing anything "serious".

I find that OO crashes a lot (thankfully file recovery works well), and simple actions like cut and paste (7000 lines of text, each 30 characters) lead to hangups where OO pegs the processor and nothing happens for minutes. By contrast, the same action is very fast in Excel. Good luck viewing a non-trivial powerpoint file. (Regarding my cut and past: Yes, after you kill and restart OO you can just save the file from the text editor and import it, but for some reason the word processor insists on opening it if the extension is ".txt". Arrggh!)

I want to like OO, I really do, but in my experience it's not for everyone.

Re:Wow really?

[jDeepbeep]

You're more productive with tools you're familiar with and used to working with.

I will second this. It is a (potentially disturbing) fact that a huge slice of the workforce is using Outlook, Excel, M$Word, Sharepoint, Exchange, IE, etc, to be productive. They are accustomed to using the products, and spend 5 days a week immersed in that world. I lose sight of this fact during much of each workday (on linux 98% of the time), that is until another email comes in from marketing, or purchasing, and it's got another Excel spreadsheet and a Word document attached. A sobering truth, but a truth nonetheless. The moment I step one inch out of my pleasant Linux bubble, it's an ocean of M$

Re:Wow really?

[notarockstar1979]

IE=ActiveX. People still write those stupid IE only controls.

Re:Wow really?

[GameboyRMH]

Gaming is the only good reason to keep Windows around IMO, and any average home/office laptop is going to make a tolerable-at-best gaming PC...and that's for 6 months until the middle-of-the-road, non-upgradeable video card is utterly obsolete, not to mention the painfully slow hard drive that all but the best laptops typically come with. "Users are used to it" isn't a great argument when Vista and 7 have interfaces that are as different from XP as any Linux distro.

Re:Other forms of Linux...

[dskoll]

If you want a Linux only netbook you can get one

Unfortunately, it's not easy to find Linux-only netbooks. I tried buying an Acer Aspire One online with Linux installed; couldn't find one anywhere. I ended up buying the "Starling Netbook" from system76. Even places I'd bought a Linux Aspire One from a few months ago no longer carry it.

Microsoft has been very successful in shutting down Linux netbook sales, unfortunately.

Best connectivity?

[wiredlogic]

Because it has the best connectivity built into the OS

Riiiight. And any other flavor of Linux is only able to connect at the equivalent level of a coffee can and string telephone. I think the real reason is because Android is a new shiny thing with lots of hype and a comforting corporate mother figure we can all snuggle up to and suckle on.

Re:Best connectivity?

[AliasMarlowe]

Android is a new shiny thing with lots of hype and a comforting corporate mother figure we can all snuggle up to and suckle on

Hmm, I tend to anthropomorphize Google as a MILF figure.
That way, I might enjoy eventually being screwed...

I want one without Windows.

[miffo.swe]

Ill take any darn OS if i just can avoid paying the Microsoft tax. The common misconception that nobody wanted Linux on netbooks is utter bullshit. They sold boatloads of netbooks before they started shipping them with a heavily discounted XP and suddenly, despite consumer demand they also yanked any Linux loaded netbook.

Re:Other forms of Linux...

[shutdown -p now]

Unfortunately, it's not easy to find Linux-only netbooks.

HP Mini 5101 is one of the best netbooks around in general (IMO, obviously), and you have an option of getting it with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop if you want (and yes, it'll be cheaper than if you order it with Windows).

User demand not there for Linux?

[jotaeleemeese]

Really?

What have companies do to seriously create or satisfy that demand?

They try a shy toe in the water (like ASUS did), are wildly successful with a Linux only product, and then, as soon as Microsoft asks them to wag the tail, roll in and play dead they do so, in some cases with particular relish.

The demand, or at the very least, interest, is there: trade magazines, conferences, server installations and desktop installations (many of which are not publicized because they are done internally by big companies, you would be surprised to know some of the names doing this) say the demand is there.

Google Linux for bunnies sakes, the amount of information out there is astronomic. That is simply not coherent with lack of interest.

The demand for half hearted attempts to make Linux available may not be there, but I would like to see if there is no demand for a Linux machine running a well configured enterpirse distribution (RedHat, Ubuntu or even SuSe) backed up by proper marketing (Dell has spreads almost every day in free newspapers here in London, I would like to see the same kind of commitment and effort put towards a line of machines runing Linux exclusively).

Don't tell me the demand is not there when you have not tried seriously to satisfy a need.

Re:User demand not there for Linux?

[DaveV1.0]

I think your memory and reasoning are both a bit faulty.

First off, why should companies bother to try to create a demand for Linux when they already have a demand for Windows based products? Especially when current data shows that this would only increase their market by about 5%.

ASUS introduced the EEE series and it was mildly successful. It became a major success only AFTER they introduced the WinXP version. And, sales of the WinXP version vastly outstripped the sales of the Linux version

You use as your barometer of public interest industry specific items, non-user applications, and installation imposed by corporate governance. That is disingenuous as the general public does not read IT trade magazines or attend IT conferences, or have home servers. You state we don't hear about the major installations, but fail to name any or provide any support for your contention. And,you fail to mention companies returning to Windows installations.

A number major computer manufactures have tried to introduce Linux based platforms, with disappointing results and higher numbers of calls for assistance and complaints.

Are you sure you want to use Google to measure interest? There are three times as many pages for Windows than for Linux, and when one considers that Linux users are much more likely to have a website devoted to their preferred OS than Windows users, things do not looks as rosy as you paint them.

Dell has spreads almost every day in free newspapers here in London, I would like to see the same kind of commitment and effort put towards a line of machines runing Linux exclusively

You are putting the cart before the horse. Again, why should Dell, or any company for that matter, spend that kind of money to attempt to create a demand for a product that will start off with, at best, 5% market share? That is just bad business sense.

What I find most amusing about your comment is that you seem to think it is the computer manufacturers' job to promote Linux. Computer manufacturers do not run commercials for Windows, nor do they create the demand for Windows. Microsoft does that. It is the responsibility of those that create and support Linux to create the demand for Linux, and thus far, they have done a terrible job of creating that demand. You want Dell to create ads for a Linux based line, but there is not a great enough demand in the general market to warrant such a thing.

The companies you should be looking to for ads and creating demand are RedHat, SuSE, and Canonical. They are the ones who have a stake in increasing general user adoption of Linux. They and the community have to improve Linux's image as user-unfriendly, difficult to use and support, and application poor. And, the community has to improve its own image, which is that it is hostile to anyone who doesn't know enough about their computer and Linux to answer one's own question.

RTFM N00B!!!

When will operating systems become commodities?

[MobyDisk]

I am still waiting for the day when operating systems will become interchangeable commodities. Or at least, when software development does not depend on the OS.

Debian now supports running with multiple kernels. Apple's POSIX compatibility layer runs on their customized Mach kernel. Most packages run on BSD and Linux. I can write software using Java, .NET, or C++ (Qt, Boost, APR, ...) and it will run on almost anything. So why do we care about operating systems any longer? Why is this the #1 thing when buying a piece of computer hardware? Should we not be at the point where any half-competent developer can just code to one of the many many cross-platform "platforms" and be OS-independent?

Yes, there are certainly features that are OS specific. But usually, those are hardware-specific. I can't expect every app that runs on my XBOX 360 to run on an iPhone. But I should expect that basic common tools can run on any netbook, regardless of OS. Or that a simple PDA application will run on any cell phone with a keyboard and touch screen.

If the world was filled with the kind of programmers who hang around on Slashdot, then this would have happened 10 years ago. I am sometimes amazed that it is still happening today.

Re:When will operating systems become commodities?

[Shados]

Integration.

Its very easy to make a game that both works on Windows and on an Xbox. The experience will be completly different. The same game that would run on both Mac and Windows (let say WoW): while you're in the game, its the same thing. When you have to troubleshot your graphic card or your network connectivity, very different.

People also care very very much about whats built in (the default apps for average users, the administration tools for advanced users).

You're right in that it doesn't matter as much as it used to. But it still matters. Sure, making a Hello World on TI calculator, a Windows box, a Ubuntu machine, or a Mac, is all the same. Getting the user experience that your customers expect however, is going to be completly different. When Windows 7 came out, the first thing I heard was people on the chrome discussions asking when the Aero Preview in the task bar would be the same in Chrome as it is in IE8. You don't do that the same way on Windows as you do in Linux. And its those little integration details that matter (and why many apps don't even always work -exactly- as is on all Linux distros, nevermind completly different boxes)

Year of the Linux on desktops? :)

[ivoras]

As Apple took FreeBSD and Mach and slapped a pretty GUI on top, making millions on the new product, so now it happens with Android and ChromeOS. On the other hand we have Gnome and KDE and Linux distributions that use them like Ubuntu and SUSE, which constantly fail to take foothold with users.

Some things clearly need both money and firm guidance...

Why not install MSIE with wine?

[walterbyrd]

http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=469

Re:Does Microsoft's OEM License Allow This?

[DaveV1.0]

You are correct about the lawsuit, which is why that provision was taken out of the OEM licensing agreement. Anti-trust rulings and all that.