Converting PC laptop to Android tablet

I would find out make/model of the built-in(?) WiFi card installed in your laptop, and search for specific drivers for the Android x86 version you installed.

As someone who went sort of the opposite direction for a while (running Linux on a Chromebook for a daily driver, well before it was officially supported), I can certainly appreciate this sort of project for the geeky personal gratification factor...

I still think you'd be way, way ahead in terms of time if you just go get them a new Android tablet or possibly a Chromebook.

I'm guessing if you managed to make it as far as installing and booting a foreign OS on PC hardware, you've got a reasonable familiarity with making things work. Kudos for you. I just question whether it's worth the effort.

I got my grands Fire Tablets. Easy to manage parental controls.

I have never heard of that conversion. I have installed Ubuntu on a new SSD to revive some old/slow laptops with good success. Honestly, I recommend just spending $100 or less on an actual Fire tablet. They go on sale a few times every year and can get many configurations under $100. They are much easier to maintain and manage vs. raw Android OS for parents and children.

Not sure about laptops but when doing the Android conversion on my old PC, I lost use of some built in added features like the wifi and extra front usb ports. I had to use a wifi dongle plugged into the rear usb ports to get wifi. The issue was that only one device could operate on the usb at a time. It could be because this was an old PC and the android conversion was done a couple years ago (old version). I haven't tried upgrading the android version as I really don't use it much.

Depending on age, might be further ahead to buy a "kids" tablet, your laptop most likely will not survive being dropped for very long.

Depending on screen size they are not all that expensive compared to replacing even an old laptop..

FIND HERE

Kid's tablets have a full rubber cushion around the device which absorbs most drop impacts and are much lighter and portable than a laptop.

Those kids tablets were not around when we bought our DD her first tablet, after a few broken screens we found aftermarket rubber cases which helped greatly to extend the life of the screen.

Besides, unless you have a touch screen on the laptop, some android APPs may not work well using a mouse or laptop touchpad.

If that laptop has at least a dual core processor and 3Gb of Ram, Windows 10 will work fine and dandy on it. If you had Win7 on it, you can run Win10 installer in upgrade mode and it will activate with digital license using the Win7 license key.

I have done this Win7 to Win10 conversion with a Acer laptop with single core AMD processor some time ago.. A bit slow booting but once booted up, it works OK, not a speed demon..

APT wrote:
I have never heard of that conversion.

I did the android-x86 conversion to an old DELL 10.4" laptop running WINXP ages ago. Did get the built-in WiFi to work fine. Though remember having to do some separate install to get Google Play access. Not sure if you even have to do that anymore.

What are benefits of using an Android laptop compared to regular windows laptop?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

I did a W10/Ubuntu dual boot on one of my PCs and it works and inter-networks just fine. I haven't managed to get it to see the W10 PCs on my network though.

NamMedevac 70 wrote:
What are benefits of using an Android laptop compared to regular windows laptop?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

I am gonna make a wild guess here..

Because the OP already has an old laptop PC they are not using?

Android x86 was free..

= free Android tablet for kids to use Android based learning APPs (also most likely free)..