I'm writing this on what feels like my brand-spanking new Android netbook. Talk about breathing new life into old hardware - this is really awesome.
I found out about the Android-x86 project today via Free Software Magazine. At first I was a bit sceptical about it's level of stability, but I'm always looking for ways to speed up my stubbornly sluggish (at least by my standards) Samsung N110 netbook. The project's download page listed releases of Android 2.2 and 2.3 and an RC for Ice Cream Sandwich.
I grabbed 2.2 (eeepc) first of all, as I didn't notice the others (I was kind of half-arsedly doing it while reading something else). I created a boot USB with UNetBootin and had lunch. Then I booted up my netbook. I was so surprised.
I had never seen my netbook work this fast before. The fluidity of the animations, the response times, the desktop switching; it was elating. This was twice as smooth as anything I've ever had on the netbook - from Ubuntu netbook remix, to Crunchbang, to Mint, this puts them all to shame. Just using the web browser was actually fun. It was really like having bought a new Android device. Everything seemed to work exactly as it should, including wireless. That's when I noticed the Android version I had - 2.2.
I quickly downloaded the release candidate for Ice Cream Sandwich and booted it up. I've never used ICS before and it's like a whole new OS. But it's gorgeous on the netbook. Most things just work (there seems to be a problem with suspend and resume but I don't use that much).
I'm sure I'll find a lot of bugs quite soon. I wonder about the battery life too. But there's no doubt about how awesome this is. I reckon anyone with an old netbook should at least try this.
Thanks to the Android-x86 team for turbo-powering my Sammy. Really looking forward to just sitting on the couch with this to read my Google reader.