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RSA: The Pwn Pad is an Android Tablet-Based Penetration Tester (Video)
Last year Pwnie Express showed us their Stealthy Pen Test Unit that plugged directly into a 115 VAC wall outlet. This year at RSA they're proudly displaying their Pwn Pad, which is a highly-modified (and rooted) Nexus 7 tablet "which provides professionals an unprecedented ease of use in evaluating wired and wireless networks." They list its core features as Android OS 4.2 and Ubuntu 12.04; large screen, powerful battery; OSS-based pentester toolkit; and long range wireless packet injection. If you can't see the video (or want to read along) the transcript is below.
They don't claim it's revolutionary. Also the integration and pre-configuration is very important to many people who would be interested in such a product. Much more so than your dimissive comment would make it seem. Sure, one could buy all the parts separately, recompile the kernel and all the software and put it tall together hemselves. On the other hand, most people's time is not worthless so the price is worth the fact that one can be up and running immediately.
First of all, this is neat. I've used usb host mode on my HP Touchpad to run a wireless adapter for kismet before just to see if I could.
But mostly I don't think this is for consumers or enthusiasts .
Let's say $300 for the most expensive nexus 7 and they're selling this for $800.
Maybe $100 for all of the other extra hardware (very generous as the wifi adapter is $15-20, etc)
That means you're paying $400, half of the device, for them to: compile a custom kernel for android (turn on packet injection), install an ubuntu chroot, install most of the packages from apt, and build a couple of them from source.
They're using an ubuntu chroot so no need for android custom gui apps.
$400 is a pretty hefty convenience cost but I guess I could see where for business purposes that would make sense for some people.