CrunchPad Web Tablet Landing “As Soon As Possible” for Less Than $300
Mike Arrington’s CrunchPad web tablet, already several prototypes in, is quickly bubbling to reality reports Bits: There’s going to be an announcement in July or August, and it’ll be available “as soon as possible.”
Arrington’s incorporated a separate company, called CrunchPad, and has apparently spent two-thirds of the last six months working on it with his 15-man team from Fusion Garage.
It’s been iterated a bunch before, but worth saying again, that the Atom-powered touchscreen CrunchPad is strictly for internet consumption—it boots directly into the WebKit browser and there’s no hard drive or keyboard, though you can plug in a keyboard if you want. It does support for Flash, so Arrington’s claim that compared to netbooks, “most people will find it works as good as a netbook or better” for getting their internet on sounds pretty reasonable, given its 12-inch screen. Pointedly, it’s not meant to compete with Apple’s mythical tablet, whenever it graces the world.
I’d take the under $300 CrunchPad over a netbook any day, since it seems like it’ll surpass them at the one thing they were supposedly designed to do—eat the internet. And it still blows my mind it took a tech blogger to actually make it happen.
By Matt Buchanan | gizmodo
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heartless_
25 Jul 09 at 8:24 am
I hope it does not get too shoe-horned into the web browser. I think Apple is going to rely heavily on Apps to move any tablet they come out with and that could easily syphon away early adopters of the Crunchpad (which will be important) simply by providing useful functionality outside of a web browser.
The Crunchpad needs to let users get outside the “box” that is a web browser based device. I understand the challenges that such a set up would cause for them (who really wants to do a full OS these days without a mutli-billion dollar corporation behind it?).
Either way, count me excited. I’ve been waiting for a decent tablet ever since I got bored with laptops and their general inconvenient home use years ago.
PS. Wireless recharging is a must. I want to set this thing down on a pad on my coffee table and have it recharge via magnetic induction (or whatever tech that is out there).