I like Android a lot for mobile phones, and could definitely see it running in other embedded environments, but wonder if it's a little bit underpowered for something like a netbook. With Linux, you get stuff like The Gimp, OpenOffice... real applications rather than 'Google Apps'. They probably don't run so fast on those small boxes, but at least they're running locally.
There's no reason why such a netbook couldn't have such apps. There's already a Java port of OpenOffice called NeoOffice. My understanding was that most of it was done through a transliteration of the OpenOffice code.
I think most users want something like a Google managed Android netbook. Just give them something that works, where they don't have to worry about compatibility issues, DLL hell, viruses, and malware. The vast majority of users would love that.
Yes, but Android doesn't use straight up Java, especially in terms of its GUI code.
I could see the appeal of the 'slimmed down' system, but I suppose we'll have to see what sorts of apps are created for Android, whether they're useful in something that's significantly different in terms of form factor. Good apps should be able to handle it, but it could be that what's good for a quick whirl on the phone is seen as a not so serious app for a computer that people actually sit down to use.
What is cool about it is it shows how cool Android is, and how people will end up doing innovative things with it.
The only real issue with netbooks is the lack of ram. Who decided that 512mb was fine for most configurations?
However the 1.6GHz Atom processor is fast enough to handle full screen flash video. Mine currently has 1Gb of ram and can run Eclipse plus the Android emulator at a pretty good speed. Compilation is noticeably slower than my MBP, but that's about it.
Presumably you could lift that out of Android and hack it into a regular Linux system. Granted, it's probably better integrated with Android, though.
The problem with running "other code" (Open Office, for example), is that all graphics have to go through the Android interface - the whole GUI is done with Java/Dalvik. That might make it difficult to integrate other programs.
