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Acer's Android Netbook will Dual-Boot Windows XP

Posted 06/05/09 at 03:01:38 PM  by Paul Lilly

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Earlier this week, Acer pulled a 180 and announced plans to ship an Android-based netbook after previously saying the open-source OS wasn't ready for netbooks. For the company's next trick, Acer now plans to dual-boot Android with Windows XP.

According to Acer chairman JT Wang, the dual-boot strategy carries less risk than shipping a netbook with Android alone, as consumer response has yet to be determined for the latter. But the company isn't ruling out a standalone Android netbook either. Acer plans to target telecom providers to sell the new netbook, and if there's enough demand, an Android-only model could be in the works.

Not everyone is happy about the decision, however, particularly open-source enthusiasts. It also remains to be seen what kind of consumer reaction there will be, considering the major selling point of an open-source platform is the reduced cost, but that won't be the case with XP tagging along for the ride.

What are your thoughts on a dual-booting netbook?

COMMENTS:5
TAGS: microsoft, operating system, Software, mobile, Google, windows xp, OS, Acer, android, netbook
COMMENTS
avatarhmm

Submitted by rhsquad on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 5:25am

Hmmmm,

VERY interesting.

[}-{Nick Breezy}-{]

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avatar?

Submitted by jwalch.hawk on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 1:07pm

I'm not sure Acer's making a smart call here.  First of all, netbooks typically have (relatively) small hard drives, and in my experience that's not the plus on a dual-boot.  Secondly, netbooks aren't really the platform for a dual-boot anyway.  Netbooks are underpowered machines whose purpose is web surfing, e-mail, and basic office productivity stuff.  I don't need multiple OS's to do that.  A dual-boot is useful when you're trying to do various sophisticated tasks that might be easier in one OS (or in a piece of software written for that OS) than another, or if a particular genre of software is more readily available on one than another (insert gaming on Linux reference here).  I don't understand how a dual-boot on a netbook would be particularly useful given the hardware.

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avatarjust fine

Submitted by k_tweener on Wed, 07/29/2009 - 7:05pm

i think the hardware in a netbook is more than adaquate to run a dual boot with android, a  smart phone OS which is less than a fifth of a gig, and windows xp which is less than third the size of vista which is ran on some netbooks. vista requires 512 mb ram, a gig to run comfortably, vista is huge compared to xp. i think this is awesome the implications are endless. it would very suped smart phone sending recieving sms, syncing to social networks, running android apps, run real time gps, then you can run more sophiticated windows pc apps on the windows side. thou muiltitaking between two OS and UI may be clunky and ill advised. there still a lot you can do. im excited for this and ill probally get first additions of this OS duo.

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avatarYou should head over the msi

Submitted by marshallladd on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 4:56pm

You should head over the msi wind forums and see how many people have dual and triple booted their winds.  I used to have my wind dual-booted with xp and ubuntu 9.04, now i'm runnin straight win7.  But a lot of people over there have win7, linux, and os X set up in triple-boot.  Granted that is more of an enthusiats area over there, but it is and can be done well.

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avatarHmm, yeah, there seem to be

Submitted by jwalch.hawk on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 11:20am

Hmm, yeah, there seem to be a following for it.  It seems to me to be more of a "do it because I can" sort of thing...  So would those same people buy it if someone else did that for them?  I'm also still not convinced there's good reasons to do it, but I realize that it was a mistake to think that it had to be practical to sell well. Lol.

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