Spy pics indicate this US$300 touchscreen Web tablet created by TechCrunch founder and Web 2.0 entrepreneur Michael Arrington could even beat Apple to the ‘iTablet’ punch!
One of the most hotly-awaited tech products of 2009 has just broken cover. It’s not the oft-rumoured Apple tablet but it could be the next best thing, and potentially even more popular in its appeal to the geek elite.
It’s the CrunchPad, a touchscreen Web tablet created by alphageek and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
The latest spy shots of the CrunchPad, which has a 12 inch touchscreen and is built solely for the Internet
The concept behind the CrunchPad is simplicity in itself: a slim and lightweight ‘Web tablet’ designed purely for the Internet. No keyboard, just a touch-sensitive 12 inch screen with the obligatory virtual keypad. Linux as the OS, of course, loaded onto a solid state drive for super-fast boot times and nimble performance.
Arrington decided to built the CrunchPad in July last year, when he decided that he wanted such a device but found no-one was making anything like – nor had any plans to do so.
The original concept sketches for the CrunchPad show Apple-esque lines and colours
“I’m tired of waiting” Arrington
blogged on TechCrunch.
“I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell Latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a MacBook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.”
Nine months down the track, there are signs that the CrunchPad is almost here. A flurry of spy shots hit the Internet over the Easter weekend, showing a new version of the tablet – now seriously streamlined for the the first rough-hewn prototype – complete with concept packaging.
The leaked shots include these colourful (and also oh-so-Apple) mock-ups of the CrunchPad's retail packaging
The price has drifted up from Arrington’s initial target of US$200 and nudges a more realistic US$300, but it’s none the less one sweet bit of kit.
The device “boots directly to a browser to surf the web” says Arrington. “The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications.”
“The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google Docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.”
Flanking the 12.1 inch touchscreen is a Webcam, speakers and a microphone for Skype video-conferencing. Internet connection is via Wi-Fi. Expansion is limited to a single USB port, with only two more jacks for power and headphones.
Clearly, the CrunchPad is
all about the Internet. “This machine isn’t for data entry.” Arrington stresses. “The virtual keyboard will make data entry a pain other than for entering credentials, quick searches and maybe light emails. But it is for reading emails and the news, watching videos on Hulu, YouTube, etc., listening to streaming music ... and doing video chat.”
The powerplant is an Intel Atom processor running “a full install of Ubuntu Linux with a custom Webkit browser” with a “total software footprint (of) around 100 MB”. Arrington’s original spec called for a 4GB solid state drive plus 512MB of RAM.
“The machine is as thin as possible (and) runs low-end hardware” Arrington explains. “If all you are doing is running Firefox and Skype, you don’t need a lot of hardware horsepower, which will keep the cost way down.”.
Of course, the CrunchPad isn’t the first device of its kind. Many similar products has been announced and even launched over the years, especially during the heady days of the dot-com boom.
Microsoft even had a crack at this with its Smart Display (also known by the early codename of Mira) of 2002-2003, a concept doomed from day one because it was straight-jacketed by Microsoft’s relentlessly PC-centric vision.
Rather than provide direct access to the Internet, Smart Displays were merely a remote version of your desktop PC’s screen – a large wireless monitor than ran Windows CE and modified Windows Terminal Server technology to connect to your PC as a thin client.
Combining such limited functionality with a price tag of US$800-900 saw the Smart Display dead and buried in less than a year from its launch.
We’ve got the feeling that the CrunchPad will fare
much better. It could even turn out to be
the hit gadget of 2009.