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."

Comments

wait... what?

[Jafafa Hots]

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.

Re:wait... what?

[SectoidRandom]

Ever heard of a NetBook?

Circles I tell ya, it all goes around in circles.

Re:wait... what?

[Fallingcow]

I'd love this thing if it could do a bit more than just browse. Hardware's beefy enough, just give it a few more apps--NFS/SMB file sharing support, a video and music player (surely it's already got a headphone jack), and an ebook/pdf reader.

It's the first "netbook"-like thing that I've seen that I might actually be interested in. All the others were too much like laptops for my taste, while lacking the horsepower of a real laptop. It'd work great as a main interface for a computer-based home-theater setup. Play music remotely anywhere in the house, control your MythTV box from any room, take it to the bath to watch a movie while you soak (laptops are really inconvenient for that task), etc. Oh, VNC or similar would be nice, too.

As just a "net appliance" it's every bit as stupid as the last generation of those (though at least it's not almost the size of a real PC, like a lot of those were) but as a "anything networked that doesn't require local storage or a real mouse+keyboard" appliance... holy shit, that's pretty cool, especially at that price.

Re:wait... what?

[Fallingcow]

I don't want it to be smaller, though. The screen's the perfect size. The iPod is something for carrying around with you everywhere, while this seems to be something for carrying around your house (or office, I guess). I also have zero interest in the app store; existing, free apps could do everything I'd want on this device (I read somewhere down the comments that it's Linux based, so just take your pick of the applications that would do the things I mentioned)

This'd be much better for toting around the house to watch movies or browse in odd places (bed, tub, etc.) than a laptop is. It could be a portable home media center control interface and media access device. I'd certainly much rather watch movies, browse, and read books on this thing than on an iPod or iPhone, though clearly those would be the better ultra-mobile choices for those tasks.

In short, it's the first netbook-like device I've seen that is sufficiently different from a full-fledged laptop or a much more portable solution like the iPod Touch you mentioned to capture my interest. IMO, it looks like it might nicely fill a niche between those two.

Re:Kinda reminds me of a Chumby

[davester666]

For $250, this would make a great peripheral for a full-fledged computer. If the host computer could use it as an external display AND touch input device, I think that would make for some more interesting possibilities than a standalone device with an underpowered CPU and a mediocre OS/apps.

Still not what I'm looking for

[mikael_j]

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

Re:Cost $250 Retail for $300?

[artor3]

1 in 30 isn't all that uncommon in consumer electronics. The RRoD issue is more like 1 in 3.