My mum bought a mowing machine few ears ago in Mountfield stores and they gave her Acer Aspire One netbook. Yeah for free - special action. But this is extraordinary piece of junk hardware - Atom CPU, 1 GB RAM, 1024×600 LCD screen and internal 16 GB compact flash card. All with preloaded Windows XP that can get you to the internet as fast as 8-9 minutes. Everything is hell slow, system has few minutes lags sometimes.
This is really not working. Mom gave it to my young cousin. He found soon it is not possible to use it. I installed him Linux on a external USB drive, he just needed something to browse the web and store some pictures.
Today he had some problem with keyboard, so I took this piece back for repairs. As he told me he is not using Windows XP on the internal "drive" anymore, I was thinking about putting some read-only Linux in there. The flash card is very slow because of writes, not reads. What an idea.
I hit Android x86 project, they are offering builds of Android for Intel CPUs. I gave it a try and - belive me or not - it's pretty usable hardware now! Boots about 40 seconds, yeah, but then it works like a charm. Ethernet, WiFi, touchpad, keyboard and mouse - all is working.
Update: It sucks :-) Once you install official Google Android Market, you find out applications crashing. I tried MeeGo and it was much better. But I did not like it. Then I also tried Chromium OS. And it is very nice! Very fast boot, nice experience. The only problem is Chrome browser :-) It writes to the disc so much it is practically unusable. Only anonymous/guest mode works fine.
I guess I will put a read-only Linux there (Puppy or DSL).
Android on Acer Aspire One
September 16, 2011