When Google set out to create Android they never wanted to limit it just to mobile phones such as the T-Mobile G1. Instead they designed it to eventually be compatible on everything from computers to in dash navigation systems. For now these ventures will have to be home grown by those daring enough to load it up on their devices.
The guys over at VentureBeat have managed to get Android loaded up and running on an Eee PC 1000 netbook. While this is still not a very powerful notebook, this is certainly some major progress. Though it may look a bit odd on such a large screen, Android is now running on the ASUS netbook despite initial sound and networking issues.
While digging through the source code they were able to locate not only the phone policy but also a MID (mobile internet device) policy suggesting that Google had already been planning for an Android-powered netbook in early builds of Android. Dima Zavin, one of Google’s own developers has ported Android over to another Intel-based netbook stating that there was no real technical issue there to prevent it. VentureBeat managed to find Czech, German, English (Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore, United States), Spanish, Japanese, German and Dutch translation options suggesting that the launch of this platform in other countries may be next.
[Via SlashGear]
What I would want to see fixed/resolved before I would use Android on a Netbook:
Google Reader is a variant of the mobile version, I want to have
at least the following added to it: keyboard shortcuts, the ability
to add/edit tags, and the total article count at the top of the
article list.
2) GMail doesn't support creating labels, nor adding/editing filters.
3) I haven't been able to get the VNC Viewer to work through SSH with
VNC Password. I want/need that. Similar support for VNC Server would be good too (I know that those apps are out there, I just haven't gotten them to all come together in a way that I can use).
4) I would vastly prefer if the netbook it was running on had 3G data
built in, and Android supported it.
Give me all of that, and I'd be all over Android on my convertible/tablet netbook with 3G data :-)
sick
I think a 5-8inch touch screen is the sweet spot for something you can easily carry around and not have to mess around with a touchpad on a netbook. I HATE touchpads. It's like sex with a condom, just kinda lame and sloppy.
Wouldn't you be way better of with windows ... literally ... not just microsoft windows but a system that actually supports (gui) windows (resize etc.). I mean with android an different devices , different screen sizes, different cpu power, different input mehtods .... developers won't put effort in on applications that support all devices. If you get lucky there might be a community putting there time and money into producing especially for an android netbook. But even then ... why not using the benefit of a mature system with tons of applications and a window driven gui?