Using Android on a Desktop PC can have multiple usage scenarios, for example testing of android applications, mobile-websites or using Android applications and games like WhatsApp from PC. While using a virtual machine is an easy way to get what's needed, it results in performance degradation, being an open-source project there are now native x86 architecture ports available for PC users like SocketQ and Project Android-x86.

When Google released Android 4.3 last week, the Android-x86 team got to the work and ported the brand new OS upgrade for x86 hardware, and we now have an ready to download test build of Android 4.3 for x86 platform.

With Android 4.3 Jelly Bean source, new 3.10.2 linux kernel and support for hardware-accelerated graphics on devices with AMD Radeon and Intel graphics chipsets the test build has almost all features enabled from the upgrade except Superuser (root) access and non-functional Suspend and resume support. Watch the demonstration video running Android 4.3 natively on an Acer Aspire 522 mini-laptop posted below, also shared is a simple "novice friendly trick" to test-run this new Android build under Windows with a few clicks and no additional software installation.

Main Features of Android x86 v 4.3

• Kernel 3.0.36, KMS enable
• Wifi support with GUI
• Ethernet configuration GUI
• Better disk installer
• Power Suspend/resume (S3 mode)
• Battery Status
• Software mouse cursor
• Mouse wheel
• Support netbook native resolution
• Audio (ALSA)
• V4l2 Camera support
• External monitor support
• External storage auto mount support
• Support external keyboard
• Debug mode with busybox
• Bluetooth
  

Now, to test-run this build on your Windows PC with minimum efforts - simply download the "MobaLiveCD" application and the "Android-x86-4.3 ISO" from the links provided below and run the Live CD. Do note that this would be painfully slow and is not the recommended way to run.

After waiting for quite a while at the above screen I gave up and installed Android x86 on VirtualBox.