Its very easy to think of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) as being purely for developers. But you don’t need to have a head full of java to make good use of it. There are plenty of neat things we mere mortals can do with it too, like trying out Froyo before we get it on our phones or taking screenshots without having to root our handsets.
If you haven’t already, pop over to the developer site and download a version for your system. The site has instructions for unpacking and you won’t need to install Eclipse for this, although you will need the JDK if you don’t have it or only have the RTE.
Plug your phone into you PC and run the ddms.bat file inside the unpacked tools folder and use the device menu to select screen capture, or ctrl+s on some machines, and there you have it!
The SDK Setup.exe file in the main SDK folder is fun too. It will let you play with emulators and have a look at up and coming features and if you want to bee a real Android geek – and we don’t blame you if you do – UNetbootin will let you create a bootable CD or thumb-drive so that you can install Android on your laptop – you can get the ISO image here.