If you’re an Android fan and in the market for a new netbook, you may want to wait a few more days so you can have the best of both worlds and the most bang for your buck (or punch for your pound). Acer’s new Aspire One D250 will be hitting the shelves on October 22nd and will dual-boot both Android and Windows 7 – not too shabby for £299. If you prefer sticking with XP Home, your price is slightly cheaper at £279. Either way, you get two operating systems on a very portable netbook that’s great for internet browsing and other applications while on-the-go. Check out pocket-lint.com for many more photos of the D250.

source: pocket-lint.com

Not to be left out in the cold, Nokia plans on hopping on the Android-powered netbook bandwagon as early as next year, according to Lazard Capital Markets analyst Daniel Amir. Mr. Amir predicts that Nokia will sell the netbook through wireless carriers, which comes as no surprise given Nokia’s business model. Mr. Amir wrote:

“In our conversations with ODMs, we have confirmed that Nokia is planning to enter the netbook market with a Google Android, ARM-based netbook that would be sold at carriers. Considering this market is dominated by the PC players, we believe Nokia could face an uphill battle to succeed in this market.”

At this point in the game, netbooks are generally PC platforms that customers use as a compromise between lugging around a laptop vs. using their smartphone for email and internet browsing. Netbooks, of course, are smaller, less powerful, but highly portable and usually provide long battery life between charges. Although Nokia may be facing an uphill battle, as Mr. Amir points it, the advantages of an Android-powered netbook cannot be overlooked, namely cost (due to using an open OS vs. paying Microsoft licensing fees for Windows) and instant-on access. If a customer just wants a larger screen to browse the internet and send/receive email, the Android netbook is an attractive option.

Source: Gigaom

How would you like to run Android on a tiny netbook in the near future? The folks at TweakTown spotted a Eee PC prototype at Computex Taipei 2009 and were able to get some additional details about this little wonder. Qualcomm calls this a “Smartbook”, and although Android appears a bit plain vanilla on there right now, it looks promising and handled smoothly on Qualcomm’s 1GHz CPU Snapdragon platform. What’s more, this platform requires very little power and no cooling is required, so we should be able to look forward to a very thin, very light “Smartbook.” Nice work, Qualcomm, and please hurry with the final touches so we can have an Android netbook!

Source: TweakTown