For a couple of weeks I’ve been reading some articles about Google Android, the new operating system for mobile devices from Google.

And I must say that I’m very curious about it. Android seems a nice alternative to iPhone which seems to be having a couple of problems with App Store and their rejection politics.

Currently there are already some devices powered by Android for sale in Portugal and as expected the prices charged by operators are quite high, which does not always allows you to purchase them easily.

If you are very curious about it but you are unable to acquire such a device in the near future or you just want to take a peek before buying it, there is an alternative that allows you to do that with no cost.

I am talking about the Live Android, a version for x86 architectures. You can download a LiveCD disc image of the Google Android operating system and burn the image to a disc, stick it in a CD-ROM drive, reboot your computer and you can check out Android without installing it or affecting any files on your PC.

You can also use the disc image in a virtualization application like VirtualBox, VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC if you want to try the operating system without even rebooting your computer.

If you want to keep in touch with Android latest news or you just need some help while developing an application for it, you may want to take a look at the Portuguese community of Android.