I’ve been using Ice Cream Sandwich RC1 on my Samsung N110 netbook for a few days now, and would like to give a rundown of how it works.
The first thing to note, as I mentioned my first reaction, is that Android is snappy. While the boot time is comparable to the average Linux distro, the speed with which it loads apps and switches between apps is super-fast, and the animations look great.
The experience is identical to running Android on a phone or tablet. Emails pop up in notifications (I love this feature). Sound effects are the same as on a phone, including the satisfying clicks when browsing the web. I’m surprised that all of this stuff works out of the box. Navigation is of course done with a mouse instead of a touch screen, and this seems to work flawlessly. There’s a swift blue glowing cursor which, in conjunction with mouse clicks, replaces your finger swipes or taps. It even works well with the fruit-cutting game (albeit making it easier).
Wireless seems to work fine, and detecting and connecting to wireless networks causes no problems. One of those creepy but useful Google quirks is that your Google account remembers your wireless passwords, so you’ll have an uncomfortable moment when you start browsing the web in your mom’s house before realising you’ve never put in the wireless password.
Suspend and resume won’t work as you would expect it to. For me, opening up my netbook after closing it and pressing the power button does start it up again but the screen stays blank and I have to reboot. Double-clicking the power-button when turned on gives the option to shutdown which is what I use and works fine for me. I believe the kernel can be patched and re-compiled to fix this issue, but I’ll wait for the next RC or the full release.
Not all apps are available, but the ones I have used all seemed to work without any problems, including games. Chrome isn’t available, but this might be because it’s only out in select territories at the moment. Firefox isn’t there, but the standard browser works well for me, even getting my bookmarks and history from my Chrome sync account.
Android might be the best OS for your ageing netbook.
The battery life is phenomenal. From full charge I got 3.5 - 4 hrs of intense, continuous usage; two hours of Google Music listening, followed by an hour-long documentary, and about an hour of browsing the web. With average usage, you basically don’t have to worry about battery life at all throughout the day. This is a revolution for me in terms of actual daily netbook use, as before the battery life was a constant worry.
I carry the netbook with me for short spurts of RSS reading and using the Wordpress app. I use it on the train by using my Gingerbread phone as a wifi hotspot. I use it as a music player while I work on my desktop, keeping it running with a pair of headphones plugged into it. I use it to check emails in the morning. I basically use my netbook a lot more.
Obviously, Android isn't a great OS for when you want to be productive. Similiarly, a netbook, like a tablet, is not a great device to code on, or type. But it is light and small and can be carried around in your bag like a book. You can open it and be doing what you want to do in seconds. If you want to do serious work, you're not going to be using a netbook anyway. Android is the most fitting OS I've found for this device.
Even at release candidate stage I recommend Android-x86 be checked out on a live USB. I will definitely be sticking with it for now, and am very excited for the full release.