It’s not unusual to get a device with Android and Windows on board these days, since I’ve seen with my own eyes netbooks being sold with this combo. So, why not apply the same thing to tablets? Firmware company Insyde Software said yesterday that device makers should build dual booting slates for the general public, with Android and Windows RT.
Insyde makes firmware and software tools for the boot environment on computers and tablets, the part before initializing the OS. They can provide the tools and firmware based on standard UEFI boot specifications for the dual boot Win RT and Android devices, so that’s why they’re interested in this initiative. Device and chip makers have shown interest in this idea, according to Aven Chuang, general manager of the PC business group at Insyde. Their products are used on devices based on x86 and ARM architectures and they’re already cooperating with Texas Instruments to bring UEFI boot to the TI OMAP CPU for Windows RT.
This is the choice used on RT tablets made by Lenovo, Acer, Dell and other partners. Insyde made a demo of an Android tablet running on an Intel Medfield CPU with its boot firmware at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The dual booting option would allow users to load the OS of their choice. Win RT debuts on October 26th and I’m sure that we’ll see it in dual boot configuration at some point. However, Microsoft could decide to lock down the systems and not allow a dual boot configuration. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Insyde manages to accomplish in the following months…
