Following Acer’s announcement of its dual-boot netbook that boasts both Google Android and Windows 7, I got an opportunity to spend some time with the netbook in question: the Acer Aspire One D250 with Android.

On this occasion, it isn’t the hardware I was interested in, but the software. For this is the first netbook PC Pro has seen to include Android as the OS, and the big question is – just how well can an operating system designed to work on a phone work on a full-blown PC?

The answer is, from my initial experiences, not very convincingly. This photo shows all the apps that are bundled as standard, which as you can see won’t stun you. There’s a photo gallery, Mozilla Firefox, a camera app, a horrendously basic music player, email – and that’s pretty much your lot.

Once I’d convinced the Aspire to join the wireless network, browsing was a fairly pleasant experience – so long as you don’t try and do anything rash, such as watch BBC iPlayer (I couldn’t get this to work).

I was impressed by the boot-up times, though, with the netbook living up to Acer’s promise of booting within 30 seconds. Battery life appears pretty poor, though, and I wouldn’t expect it to last much more than two hours.

If you want to move away from Android then you can instantly boot into Windows, but I couldn’t find a way to swap from Windows 7 to Android: there’s nothing built into Acer’s installation of Windows 7 that allows this (although there is a Quick Switch option from Android).

Aside from the software, the Acer Aspire One D520 does have some appeal: it’s slim and light, and definitely has more than a hint of style. The maroon finish here is particularly nice, to my eyes at least.

I’ll now be haranguing Acer so we can get a sample to fully test in the Labs, so look out for a review soon.