Slew Of Android-Powered Netbooks Due Later This Year

Several of the top netbook manufactures including Acer and HP have confirmed plans to potentially offer Google's open source Android operating system on low cost netbooks coming later this year.

Acer confirmed today that it was making Android PCs and will likely be the first company to launch netbooks using Google's Android. Jim Wong, Acer's global president for IT products, confirmed the news at a news conference at Computex, the world's second-largest PC trade show held in Taipei.

Acer will not speculate on the number of netbooks it expects to ship with Android installed, nor are they speculating on possible ship dates or other details such as pricing but the average savings for using Android versus Windows XP is roughly $25. Meaning these new netbooks might be a viable alternative at a cheaper cost than the current Linux based PCs.

The Aspire One netbooks Acer displayed at its news conference on Tuesday at Computex were running a dual-boot system allowing users to switch between Android and Windows XP, but Wong said the device that goes on sale later this year will only have Android and another Linux OS.

OEM/PC vendor Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) also showed off their first netbook with Google's Android operating system at Computex. The ECS device called the T800 has an 8.9-inch screen, a small keypad and weighs less than a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and features a chip from Texas Instruments (TI) called OMAP3, which contain ARM processing cores. ECS will offer two devices, one with ARM processors that run at 800MHz and another at 1GHz.

At least one company, Asustek, will be placing their plans to offer Android on hold. Shortly after confirming plans to utilize the new operating system top executives from the company said the project will be put on the backburner for now.

Accroding to PCWorld Asustek officials feel the new OS is not mature enough for consumers with vice chairman of Asustek Jonathan Tsang stating the "Eee PC with Android is not ready yet because the technology is not mature. For the time being this project is not a priority because our engineering resources are limited."