FWIS3

If you have an old laptop or something, and want to mess around with something new:

http://www.android-x86.org/

you can turn your laptop into a wannabe tablet, running Android 4.4.

I have a session going in Virtualbox right now, BTW. 8 GB virtual disk, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB shared video RAM, no video acceleration at all. It's *FAST.*

Unfortunately there seem to be issues with application compatibility, e.g. both Chrome and Firefox crash on start. (Maybe because the builds in the Google store are for ARM processors?) Not all the preinstalled apps work either. So, not exactly an amazing user experience.

Update: actually this thing really is production ready! I installed it on one of my laptops, and it works great - all the apps work, the crashes must have been from Virtualbox issues. I'm posting this from the Android-x86 laptop.

Now, if only I could figure out how to install stuff on it without using my Google account...