Android Is Here

I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.

I wonder which way it will go: Will many people will be disappointed to
discover that “15 second startup� doesn’t actually apply to Windows? Or will
lots of them actually work perfectly happily with the quick-booting Linux
desktop, and never notice that they’re not using Windows?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

geoff wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One
>> 10.1" boasting "Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)" for $699.
>>
>> I wonder which way it will go: Will many people will be disappointed
>> to discover that "15 second startup" doesn't actually apply to
>> Windows? Or will lots of them actually work perfectly happily with
>> the quick-booting Linux desktop, and never notice that they're not
>> using Windows?
>
> Yep , startup is the most important issue eh Larry. 15 seconds is good, but
> (shudder) 30 seconds is just impossible to cope with, and 60 'the end of the
> world'.
>
> Bet if you got a root (unlikely I guess) you would be even quicker than 15
> seconds. Oh, but that's not start-up, that's the whole ession I guess.
>
> geoff
>
>

Depends how useful the quick boot environment is probably. My PC has an
Asus board that come with the option of a rapid boot environment called
splashtop, but its so limited I haven't used it beyond the new shiny toy
to play with stage. Its sort of linux based. (Uses a real (time) OS with
a modified linux stack.)

It only allows connectivity via the onboard LAN port, so if you are on a
wireless network no connectivity, it has a couple of crap games, and an
internet browser, a file manager (FAT or NTFS, apparently no support
for ext3), media player skype and instant messenger applications.

If thats what andriod does its dead in the water already, not much use
to anybody.

Squiggle

In message <hcagg4$cle$>, Squiggle wrote:

> My PC has an Asus board that come with the option of a rapid boot
> environment called splashtop, but its so limited I haven't used it beyond
> the new shiny toy to play with stage.
>
> It only allows connectivity via the onboard LAN port, so if you are on a
> wireless network no connectivity, it has a couple of crap games, and an
> internet browser, a file manager (FAT or NTFS, apparently no support
> for ext3), media player skype and instant messenger applications.

<http://www.splashtop.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/31/the-splashtop-jailbreak/>

All I had to do was Google "splashtop hack". You can, too...

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <hcagg4$cle$>, Squiggle wrote:
>
>> My PC has an Asus board that come with the option of a rapid boot
>> environment called splashtop, but its so limited I haven't used it beyond
>> the new shiny toy to play with stage.
>>
>> It only allows connectivity via the onboard LAN port, so if you are on a
>> wireless network no connectivity, it has a couple of crap games, and an
>> internet browser, a file manager (FAT or NTFS, apparently no support
>> for ext3), media player skype and instant messenger applications.
>
> <http://www.splashtop.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/31/the-splashtop-jailbreak/>
>
> All I had to do was Google "splashtop hack". You can, too...

Or, for the same amount of ****ing about, I could turn off all the
memory testing, networking booting options in BIOS and install a normal
distro for sod all difference in end result. Hibernate to disk and be
back up and running in a few seconds more.

Squiggle

In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.

By the way, looking through that flyer and the others that arrived at the
same time, I couldn't see any Windows Seven notebooks advertised as low as
$699.

Temporary situation, or a sign of things to come?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.

Just had a play with this. It was a helluva job just to get it to boot into
Android in the first place: there's an Android Configuration Wizard that you
launch under XP, but even after running through that, and using the
“Recovery� option, it still kept booting into XP, with no option for
anything else that we could see.

But it was also trying (and failing) to do a network PXE boot before the
hard-drive boot. Moving the hard drive to number one in the BIOS boot order
got rid of the PXE boot error, and also, finally, let us get into Android.

(Getting into the BIOS was an adventure in itself, because the screen that
gave us the options for doing so only flashed up for about a quarter of a
second on each boot.)

The Android interface was very spare, with initially just 4 icons visible
for network-centric apps including Firefox. Right-click brought up another
pane that included a “Settings� option from which I could access an
“Application Manager�. But the options listed in there didn’t seem very
informative. You might be able to install new apps, but that probably
requires a network connection, which we didn’t have in the store. And there
was a tab on the right-hand side of the screen that you could click to bring
up more icons. Also, you could drag the entire desktop to the right, to
reveal a Google search bar that was practically the full width of the
screen. So the desktop was effectively two screens wide.

Conclusion: this is a system designed to live on the network, and it seems
pretty useless without a connection to one. Is wireless networking
commonplace enough in NZ to make something like this useful? Or, given the
trouble we had to go through to access the Android option, will many users
not even realize it’s there?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
>> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.
>
> Just had a play with this. It was a helluva job just to get it to boot into
> Android in the first place: there's an Android Configuration Wizard that you
> launch under XP, but even after running through that, and using the
> “Recovery� option, it still kept booting into XP, with no option for
> anything else that we could see.
>
> But it was also trying (and failing) to do a network PXE boot before the
> hard-drive boot. Moving the hard drive to number one in the BIOS boot order
> got rid of the PXE boot error, and also, finally, let us get into Android.
>
> (Getting into the BIOS was an adventure in itself, because the screen that
> gave us the options for doing so only flashed up for about a quarter of a
> second on each boot.)
>
> The Android interface was very spare, with initially just 4 icons visible
> for network-centric apps including Firefox. Right-click brought up another
> pane that included a “Settings� option from which I could access an
> “Application Manager�. But the options listed in there didn’t seem very
> informative. You might be able to install new apps, but that probably
> requires a network connection, which we didn’t have in the store. And there
> was a tab on the right-hand side of the screen that you could click to bring
> up more icons. Also, you could drag the entire desktop to the right, to
> reveal a Google search bar that was practically the full width of the
> screen. So the desktop was effectively two screens wide.
>
> Conclusion: this is a system designed to live on the network, and it seems
> pretty useless without a connection to one. Is wireless networking
> commonplace enough in NZ to make something like this useful? Or, given the
> trouble we had to go through to access the Android option, will many users
> not even realize it’s there?

I would say the core reason for this is for model variants equipped with
3G, Some cell providers are selling them.
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/shop/mobil...uId=sku3910018
Useful for small biz people using Xero/WorkFlowMax/Internet
Banking/Google Apps, or Facebook users on the go who desperately need to
get back to Farmville.
This market is just starting.

victor

In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.

Now also in the Noel Leeming catalogue at the identical price, “Quick 15 sec
start up�, also “UPGRADE to Windows 7 for a nominal fee�. No mention of how
“nominal� that fee is, or of the edition of Windows 7 you get—Starter?

Or of how easy it is, or isn’t, to actually perform the upgrade...

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

In message <hconft$dfk$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
>> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.
>
> Now also in the Noel Leeming catalogue at the identical price ...

Went to have a look, they didn’t even have one on show. Asked a salesperson,
he didn’t know what I was talking about, until he picked up one of their
brochures and I pointed it out to him. Said they had them in stock, but
couldn’t show me one and didn’t even know what Android was.

Points to the kind of success they’re going to have selling them, methinks.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <hconft$dfk$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> In message <hc7s89$hfn$>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> I see in the latest Bond & Bond flyer there is the Acer Aspire One 10.1"
>>> boasting “Windows XP + Android (15 sec startup)� for $699.
>> Now also in the Noel Leeming catalogue at the identical price ...
>
> Went to have a look, they didn’t even have one on show. Asked a salesperson,
> he didn’t know what I was talking about, until he picked up one of their
> brochures and I pointed it out to him. Said they had them in stock, but
> couldn’t show me one and didn’t even know what Android was.
>
> Points to the kind of success they’re going to have selling them, methinks.

They must get so sick of obsessed nerds trying to catch them out.

victor