This morning I decided to finally give Android a try. I have not really ever been able to give Android a real shot. I have heard that this one little operating system will someday be on set-top boxes, netbooks, and our cell phones (it’s original intended location). From what I briefly played with before it felt like a good cell phone OS.

Well today I got to give it a try on my PC with Live-Android. Live-Android is a live CD of Android so you can burn the iso to disk and have the full Android experience on your PC without having to actually install it (when you reboot your PC it will be just as you left it). The setup was incredibly simple. Just download the two parts of the file, use HJSplit to join them together, burn the new iso, and reboot.

So how does Android feel as a computer operating system? It feels like a very simple operating system that makes sense. There really appears to be nothing hidden from the user. You have your apps listing on the right in a pull out menu. You have multiple desktops that you can navigate away from. It is just a very simple environment.

This does not mean you can go run out and use this to replace Windows. You cannot install this (that I know of) on your computer and there really are no applications that are very useable. The input methods for the OS are pretty much the exact same on the cell phone so you find yourself doing the same finger gestures on the screen except with your mouse. So the interaction method needs some work.

All in all Live-Android feels a little more proof-of-concept rather than a replacement OS. Having said that I cannot wait to see what happens with Android on the desktop/set-top box/netbook. It has a lot of potential. Hopefully Google Chrome OS won’t destroy Android’s potential.