4 ms·

Acer to start selling netbooks running Android

10 points by seldo 17y ago

noss 17y ago
Idle observation: The argument that avoiding Windows would lower the cost since there is no license cost to pay Microsoft seems flawed in practice. The psychology does not work in favour of it. It would be interesting to instead see a strategy where it costs more just because it is not an old boring Windows system, but a cool modern Android system on it. Actually charge the customer slightly more. Signal that "this is value added, it is the premium version". Of course, then Android needs to meet those expectations and be awesome.
- netsp 17y ago
  Exactly. I don't expect any wins to come because just Linux is cheaper. It needs to be better or easier in some ways. Better battery life. More complete out of the box. Something like that. It can if it makes the net books cheaper by running on cheaper hardware, but RAM isn't very expensive.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  And this shouldn't be hard because Microsoft enforces maximum specs on the XP machines leaving a gap in the market for "top-end netbooks" which people seem to think is an oxymoron. I'm very much in the market for an ARM-based, linux netbook with a Pixel Qi screen. I think it would blow the Kindle out the water as an e-book reader (hardware-wise, access to content not so much).
ianbishop 17y ago
I say this somewhat blindly, as I have not spent much time with the Android code base, but trying to scale an operating system from mobile phone to netbook seems a tad ambitious, no?
- smhinsey 17y ago
  I think the OS itself was built with this in mind, so the default apps are probably fine. The real question is going to be the 3d party apps. I know apple is already having to deal with this to some extent with some of the resolution independence features in 3.0, but I'm not sure what google's plan is.
  - ram1024 17y ago
    android is still working out the logistics, but it would be simple enough to alert users that said apps won't run on their system due to lack of hardware components touch screens etc. people creating apps will see value in supporting multiple devices under the android umbrella, and adding in clever hacks to simulate say accelerometer functions with mouse movements or whatever. or android itself will have some kind of built in spoofing/emulation of mobile functionality that the user can simply configure to their liking
- jws 17y ago
  The OS isn't a problem. Consider Linux inhabiting spaces from embedded (32M ram and a little flash is comfortably doable with Debian, this is a small fraction of an iPhone) to 87% of the top 500 supercomputers on the planet (top500.org). The user interface is a whole different question. Apple considered this question and decided that phones are too small to share a user interface with modern desktops. 9-10" displays are somewhere between. My personal observations on display size and desktop designed user interfaces: 24", 20", 15", and 13" are all nice and I don't feel cramped or diluted on any of them. On my 9" netbook I resent the area lost to non-core display tasks (menu bars, icons, all the spacing and stuff that makes it work well on larger devices). But after abonding the desktop metaphor, on my 4"(ish) iPhone with its size sensitive applications I don't feel cramped.
adatta02 17y ago
Hmm things will get interesting if the Android netbook distribution is closely compatible (or totally) with the phone version. If you can easily run apps built for phones on a netbook and vice versa then I'd totally whip out Eclipse and start hammering out cheap Android apps. The problem will be if this fragments the Android SDK to a point where end user's cant tell if the application is going to work correctly on their device. And of course another blow to Linux on the desktop because here is another platform to help you avoid the perils of the Linux GUI.
- berntb 17y ago
  Android apps under Linux is not new: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/canonical-developers-aim-to-make-android-apps-run-on-ubuntu.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/canonical-de... (You have a point: To run the same apps on your mobile phone and on your netbook sounds like a big win.)
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  This is not a blow to "Linux" on the desktop or netbook, quite the reverse. While I don't fully understand it's appeal it's a fact that to get Android running with wireless/suspend and all the other fiddly bits you've got to get the lower levels of "Linux" on the hardware. That's all GPL so voila, Gnome/KDE or whatever is pretty much ready to roll. Hardware support is the problem. If they're fixing that while chasing some Android buzz then I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
- ido 17y ago
  > If you can easily run apps built for phones on a netbook and vice versa then I'd totally whip out Eclipse and start hammering out cheap Android apps. The problem will be if this fragments the Android SDK to a point where end user's cant tell if the application is going to work correctly on their device. Even if it works on both, how do you design an interface that works well on both a 320x480 display and a 1024×600 one? That's 4 times the size, totally different worlds.

10 points by seldo 17y ago

noss 17y ago

Idle observation: The argument that avoiding Windows would lower the cost since there is no license cost to pay Microsoft seems flawed in practice. The psychology does not work in favour of it. It would be interesting to instead see a strategy where it costs more just because it is not an old boring Windows system, but a cool modern Android system on it. Actually charge the customer slightly more. Signal that "this is value added, it is the premium version". Of course, then Android needs to meet those expectations and be awesome.

netsp 17y ago
Exactly. I don't expect any wins to come because just Linux is cheaper. It needs to be better or easier in some ways. Better battery life. More complete out of the box. Something like that. It can if it makes the net books cheaper by running on cheaper hardware, but RAM isn't very expensive.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
And this shouldn't be hard because Microsoft enforces maximum specs on the XP machines leaving a gap in the market for "top-end netbooks" which people seem to think is an oxymoron. I'm very much in the market for an ARM-based, linux netbook with a Pixel Qi screen. I think it would blow the Kindle out the water as an e-book reader (hardware-wise, access to content not so much).

ianbishop 17y ago

I say this somewhat blindly, as I have not spent much time with the Android code base, but trying to scale an operating system from mobile phone to netbook seems a tad ambitious, no?

smhinsey 17y ago
I think the OS itself was built with this in mind, so the default apps are probably fine. The real question is going to be the 3d party apps. I know apple is already having to deal with this to some extent with some of the resolution independence features in 3.0, but I'm not sure what google's plan is.
- ram1024 17y ago
  android is still working out the logistics, but it would be simple enough to alert users that said apps won't run on their system due to lack of hardware components touch screens etc. people creating apps will see value in supporting multiple devices under the android umbrella, and adding in clever hacks to simulate say accelerometer functions with mouse movements or whatever. or android itself will have some kind of built in spoofing/emulation of mobile functionality that the user can simply configure to their liking
jws 17y ago
The OS isn't a problem. Consider Linux inhabiting spaces from embedded (32M ram and a little flash is comfortably doable with Debian, this is a small fraction of an iPhone) to 87% of the top 500 supercomputers on the planet (top500.org). The user interface is a whole different question. Apple considered this question and decided that phones are too small to share a user interface with modern desktops. 9-10" displays are somewhere between. My personal observations on display size and desktop designed user interfaces: 24", 20", 15", and 13" are all nice and I don't feel cramped or diluted on any of them. On my 9" netbook I resent the area lost to non-core display tasks (menu bars, icons, all the spacing and stuff that makes it work well on larger devices). But after abonding the desktop metaphor, on my 4"(ish) iPhone with its size sensitive applications I don't feel cramped.

adatta02 17y ago

Hmm things will get interesting if the Android netbook distribution is closely compatible (or totally) with the phone version. If you can easily run apps built for phones on a netbook and vice versa then I'd totally whip out Eclipse and start hammering out cheap Android apps. The problem will be if this fragments the Android SDK to a point where end user's cant tell if the application is going to work correctly on their device. And of course another blow to Linux on the desktop because here is another platform to help you avoid the perils of the Linux GUI.

berntb 17y ago
Android apps under Linux is not new: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/canonical-developers-aim-to-make-android-apps-run-on-ubuntu.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/05/canonical-de... (You have a point: To run the same apps on your mobile phone and on your netbook sounds like a big win.)
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
This is not a blow to "Linux" on the desktop or netbook, quite the reverse. While I don't fully understand it's appeal it's a fact that to get Android running with wireless/suspend and all the other fiddly bits you've got to get the lower levels of "Linux" on the hardware. That's all GPL so voila, Gnome/KDE or whatever is pretty much ready to roll. Hardware support is the problem. If they're fixing that while chasing some Android buzz then I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
ido 17y ago
> If you can easily run apps built for phones on a netbook and vice versa then I'd totally whip out Eclipse and start hammering out cheap Android apps. The problem will be if this fragments the Android SDK to a point where end user's cant tell if the application is going to work correctly on their device. Even if it works on both, how do you design an interface that works well on both a 320x480 display and a 1024×600 one? That's 4 times the size, totally different worlds.