This chip will let you run Android on any laptop

After a great success in the world of Tablets and Smartphones now Android Operating system may also be running laptops. We already have some Android based NetBooks that run through production mills of confused OEMs. Now according to some recent news updates a certain manufacturers are including Android in a SoC bundle into their latest ultraportable laptops.

And for the do it yourself group of people there is an option of converting your laptop into an Android device. For this you will need one CUPP Computing’s 2.5inch module for x-86 PCs and it is condemned as PunkThis for PCs. It is a tiny system on a chip built on a PCB board with SATA and mini PCIe connections on one side.

This board actually controls all the essential hardware of the laptop which includes the display, keyboard touchpad and even the speakers. The hardware like the processor, RAM and Wi-Fi chips are all squeezed onto the board itself which contains a Texas Instruments 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and on the board MicroSD card and HDMI ports.

The PunkThis also includes a pass through the SATA slot or one can buy an enclosure that replaces the optical drive instead. With these ports you can manage to stick with your old hard drives. Along with all this the PunkThis board has also some other advantages like it has a low power drain of ARM based hardware. A laptop using the chip could potentially double or even triple its battery life.

CUPP Computing plans to release the PunkThis board for a price of $200 on the market. They are also planning to release standalone versions of the product and easy to adapt kits for specific laptop and x86 tablet models. Currently it runs Android 2.3 but they plan to update the software as it becomes available. This may mean that Ice Cream Sandwich may also run on this board. 

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