First, let's explore a couple of options for the term freelance: You could be someone who works from home (college dorm, etc) and creates stuff of interest, hoping someone will buy it. Mark Zuckerberg (sp) comes to mind. He did OK. Are you a Mark Zuckerberg? Do you have that level of focus and an acceptance that there will be hard times before the good times, if there are good times? This is perhaps the riskiest version of freelancing. Linus Torvalds is another example of this sort of thing. In his case, he did something for himself (Linux) that gradually gained broad acceptance. You could work from home on a platform that you learn. For instance, there are many IOS and Android developers. Some work from home, some work for companies. In this case, start at home, but keep your day job - Unless you don't care about stuff like eating and having a roof over your head. You could do contract work. In this case, you would want to put your name out there on the employment boards, then field contacts from the agencies that do contract work. However, to get into this field, you have to put down the "for Dummies" books, and get a real background in some valuable area of development (Hot areas are in Artificial Intelligence and Security). You don't absolutely have to have a degree, but it does open doors. But you do have to have demonstrable skills. Will your current employer help pay for schooling? Do you have access to GI Bill type benefits (That's a USA thing, but other countries have their own support systems)? Basically, a contract agency is like an employer, in that they will interview you, and expect you to have skills. If you are only entry level and can't impress an agency, then you will have to seek an entry level position with a company doing development work. Once you have some growth and understanding, if you still want to contract, you will at least be able to get past the interview. My Path: I spent the first part of my professional life as a USAF officer and pilot. After I got out, I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I chose to go back to school and get a degree in computer science. Before I finished, I got a job as a C programmer with a defense company. After a time, conditions were ripe for change, so I worked a couple of years as a contractor. Then I went back to defense work. 2001 was hard times, and I worked most of the year (on and off) as a contractor, but finally got a job with a defense company. I've been with them now for about 15 years.

I can't imagine your I7 not being able to run Android Studio, with one caveat - you do have to make sure you have the Java 1.7 SDK (or higher) installed for the current version of Android Studio. You can get by with Java 1.6 SDK if you limit your development to older versions of Android, but you may have to revert to Eclipse with the Android APK. Android Studio will work just fine with Java 1.8 SDK installed, though I don't know if it will support the full use of the added Java language features like the functional programming stuff. As an aside, if for some reason you cannot get this working, you may also look into installing Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 beta. I believe they are going to support Android development in that edition. There's also VS 2013 Community Edition, which is the same as VS Pro, but without the "you have to pay for it" thing. I haven't investigated if you can develop for Android using VS 2013, but I suspect that you can by developing your application and using the Android NDK to convert your native code to Adroid code. As far as a typing interface for your android device, most mobile devices are blue tooth enabled. They make keyboards for that. Motorola even sold a keyboard for my old Motorola Xoom. Still, that would have been painful. I do my development work with two 24" monitors. Trying to do the same thing on an 8" tablet would drive me to find other work. :) Others have answered that there are apps for developing on android, so I won't address that issue.

Eric