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Leaked Pics of CrunchPad Elicit Progress Update
TechCrunch has released a few more technical details, pictures, and general comments about their CrunchPad project as a recent accidental leak saw a new round of images posted to the web. It seems that the tablet has continued to grow and evolve with the help of an Intel Atom chip (as opposed to the Via chip previously used), new software from Fusion Garage, and a bottom-up Linux install. "I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined. The goal — a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web. The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications. That's it."
http://www.chumby.com/
I like the philosophy behind the Chumby, but if the CrunchPad is cheaper, I'd get that.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
So far, they remain quite sucessful.
I seem to remember there being such things in the first web bubble... net appliances they were called, souped-down computers used for just browsing the web.
I seem to recall the hackers and linux users working hard to get them to be MORE than just browsers and work more like a real computer. I also recall them failing miserably in the market.
Sometimes I begin to think that people just don't know what they want.
This space available.
There's no business to be built on $50 profit.
Let's imagine they go direct for now. No resellers at all.
When a single machine is returned, that's $250 out of the businesses pocket. It would take 10 sold machines to recoup the cost of the single return!
What are the industrial design the startup costs? You know, the casing mold, PCB sourcing/assembly. Someone pays to have the device tested by regulatory agencies. Now, you want to make a return on that initial investment too.
As an expensive hobby, it would work.
Oh, and I want one with a mythtv frontend.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So is there an LCARS skin for it yet?
Does it support the interfaces for your standard issue Tricoder?
Wait a few more years. Fill the time by getting a life. Have a nice day.
-=Bang Bang=-
It's too big. Cut the size in half and add mobile broadband options in addition to wifi. Otherwise it should be good.
It's essentially a PADD from Star Trek, and once someone figures out that copying that design will result in huge profits, we'll see some really cool gear.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
they should try thinning out the form factor a bit, at least something on the scale of an iphone or or better, with a screen the size of a piece of a4 with no more than 3mm case border.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Holy crap! I could use 20 of these in my business right now!
Elicit? Nice. I guess it's a refreshing change from the usual lose/loose etc.
For years I've been trying to find a fairly small (10-13" monitor) tablet which would essentially be a Wacom Cintiq with a built-in computer just fast enough to run apps like Sketchbook Pro, Painter or other "creative" applications, but apparently there are no machines like this.
There have been a few tablets with a good stylus but these have generally been sold as "high-end" machines meaning they've been expensive, overpowered and too big, I'm looking for what could be described as a digital sketchbook, any performance-intensive image editing could be done on a regular laptop or desktop.
I've tried to look for good tablets all over the place but apparently this particular kind of tablet isn't interesting in the eyes of manufacturers (even though I've seen way too many threads on various art/graphics/design forums where people have been looking for just this kind of machine).
Oh well, the more tablets that are on the market the bigger the chances of me eventually finding what I'm looking for.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
First of all, it would only take 5 machines to recoup. Second, you assume that the entire machine is lost.
Let's say you have to send a call tag and send another one out. Now you're out $25, and you have the broken unit back. Let's say that nearly half of it is broken, and it costs $100 in parts and labor to get it to a "refurb" state. You sell it on your website for $250. You're out $125, which is paid for in the sales of three more units.
As long as you keep your failure rate below 20%, you are breaking even. Do any volume, and your costs go down. Stay in business, and your costs will go down over time. Sell "extended" warranties for $49, which most users will never bother using. Manufacture a few accessories at a 50% margin, or just license it to third party manufacturers and collect the checks. You could probably forget about the profit and make plenty of money just from the fees.
A 17% net profit margin at launch? Christ. That's a wet dream for any real business owner.
Wait a few more years. Fill the time by getting a life. Have a nice day.
Only someone insecure with their own life would ever say something like this.
I've tried using my Nokia 800 and my Pepper Pad 3. They both come close, but are clumsy at both higher resolutions and text entry (well, the PP3 handles text entry fine, really). If I could get something that does 1280x800 resolution with a decent virtual keyboard, as well as decent battery life, I'd be all over it.
iPad
Now wish me luck against Apple's attorneys.
I just don't get the no-keyboard craze. Even in a browser-only device I would still want to be able to fill out forms, enter URLs, etc... I couldn't count the times per week I enter an address into the google maps mobile app on my cell. Yes, you can have letters on the touchpad but then your viewing screen shrinks down to the size of a pea every time you go to type. If there is more than one thing on the form... enter one line then shrink the keyboard (rarely easy w/out accidentally hitting another letter) scroll so you can see the next line, select it, bring back the on-screen keyboard...
come on!!
We need more mobile devices WITH slideout keyboards not without. So what if it adds a 1/4" to the thickness of the thing. I have an extended battery on my cellphone which adds more than that and I carry it all the time. It has never gotten in my way.
The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications. That's it.
Sounds like Symbian or PalmOS, something that allows you to do what you want without the OS getting into the way.
What your looking at is the future, unfortunately it's the future maybe a decade from now when everything is cloud hosted. When that happens then this type of hardware will be perfect, you'll be able to run anything you want. But as it stands there's a limited amount you can really do on the web, and so this will have a limited market. Especially since products like the iphone can accomplish much of what this does in a much easier to carry package.
If the first thing you thought when you saw it was: "How can I make this work with Linux.", then you are officially a nerd.
Is it only me who is surprised (because of ignorance) that the s/w footprint stands at 100MB, when evidently they just want to control the h/w & for an application they want only a browser? Well, for practical uses, the browser would need flash plugins, etc. and most obviously would need addons if the browser supports it. When a Linux distro like DamnSmallLinux provides much more than a browser in just 50MB why do these guys need double of that?!
-- Prem
Aiming to tweet on a rice
Did you want something you couldn't buy, or was what you wanted not available to buy?
At the bottom of the
Well?
What, exactly, is "a bottom-up Linux install"?
Forgive me for thinking it sounds like giving a piece of hardware an enema.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Any OS would think it was running in a regular notebook with a regular keyboard and a regular mouse, so the hardware would not be handicapped by the lack of available custom software. I see no reason why a tablet like this does not exist today, as there are lots of things one could do with it even if CPU power was low. The Nokia N8xx tablets were close to this goal, but their dependence on custom software (applications had to be hildonized) made them much less useful than they could have been otherwise.