Acer Aspire One Happy

Netbooks are everywhere these days, but this new model from Acer comes with an extra twist. While the Acer Aspire One Happy runs the standard Windows 7 Starter Edition, it also comes with a second personality that turns it into an Android 2.1 machine.

This means you can work in a full-feature PC environment, but when you just want to check e-mail, or browse the internet, you can simply do so in the Android environment, which boots instantly like tablets.

The idea is to give you the best of both worlds, but the two environments however are separated as two distinct partitions, meaning that you won't be able to access files across the divide. To do that, you have to drag the files from Windows into the Android partition, which only has 4GB of memory - very limited in terms of storage for photo or music files.

It's not only the OS that has a factor of two - the processor, an Intel Atom N550, comes with two cores, so you should get plenty of power. The Aspire One Happy also comes with a respectable 250GB hard-disk drive, a 10.1-inch display, and a 6-cell battery for extended battery life.

The only thing that seems to merit its 'One' denomination is the RAM, which is limited to 1GB; luckily, this is upgradable to a maximum of 2GB.

The Acer Aspire One Happy is priced at HK$3,280.

Pros: runs both Windows 7 and Android, instant access e-mail, browser, and other Android apps

Cons: can't expand memory for Android, need to upgrade RAM