Submitted by A sexy 12″ capacitive touchscreen tablet, runs Linux, boots straight into a WebKit-based browser, for 300 USD. We all want that, right? Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame, figured last year that we indeed all want something like this, and he started working on actually developing such a device. We’ve seen a few prototypes already, but the “leaked” photos published of the latest prototype are nothing short of stunning.
Arrington provides more details about the CrunchPad and the photos on his blog. The CrunchPad is a thin 12″ capacitive touchscreen tablet, powered by an Intel Atom processor. It doesn’t have a hard drive, and boots straight into a custom WebKit browser that runs on top of Linux; the entire software stack has a footprint of just 100mb. It has no keyboard, but comes with a virtual one. The device is not meant for data entry, but for “reading emails and the news, watching videos on Hulu, YouTube, etc., listening to streaming music on MySpace Music and imeem, and doing video chat via tokbox”.
The device is developed by several different people and companies. The prototype seen in the “leaked” (you’re not fooling anyone, Mike) photos is developed by Fusion Garage, both the hardware as well as the software. It now uses a custom Linux implementation (instead of previous versions using Ubuntu) and comes with the aforementioned custom WebKit-based browser.
The device actually looks pretty ready; the software seems to be working, and the device itself also looks solid and finished. The packaging looks good as well, and they appear to have quite a few of them. Who knows, maybe the CrunchPad is closer than we think.
I’ve been excited by the gdium last year and they didn’t release. Wake me up when they release something. Until then, it is just a buzz that some news sites make up in order to create ad revenue. It’s easy to make those pictures with a plastic box and the gimp, it’s harder to actually make something as cool as this AND get the industrial strength to make it available to the market while keeping the thing so cool. IF it is released one day, it will become something that runs Windows and that cost $1000.
Unrelated but here you might get more info :
http://www.gdium.com/en/product/blog
http://olph.gdium.com/
And here there’s a review of it:
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/emtec-gdium-liberty-1000.as…
http://www.gdium.com/en/product/liberty1000
Awesome laptop – too bad I can’t purchase it. Know of a place I can order it and get shipped to New Zealand given that their website has absolutely no information on who is selling them.
Seems like prelaunch publicity; not exactly leaked, more like “oh look, I accidentaly sent our marketing stuff to the press”.
Edit: now I see the quotes in “leaked”.
Edited 2009-04-10 13:42 UTC
Looks like a nice toy for geeks. Having the thing rotate the screen content like the iPhone would be useful.
Add Windows 7 to the mix and it could have potential.
Yeah..coz no device could possibly have any potential without Windows 7…
I sure as hell won’t buy one if it only runs Linux.
The thing boots straight to a web browser. What difference does it make? Sheesh…
So…who loses?
How’s that router of yours going?
I sure as hell don’t lose.
My previous router was a FreeBSD-based PC running, and my current router is an Airport Extreme. I stay as far away from Linux as possible.
Ahh, well that’s your choice. Be thankful you have one. All of us Linux users you look down upon certainly are.
I am thankful that I have a choice, but I’m thankful to Kernighan and Ritchie, David Cutler, Avie Tevanian, and the people who grew FreeBSD out of the unofficial patchkit for 386BSD that it started out as.
If you think Linux has anything to do with FreeBSD, OS X, UNIX in general, or Windows, or that the people responsible for Linux have in any way driven the development of the above-mentioned OSes, then you’re silly. I’m in no way thankful to Linus Torvalds, for example. What has he done for me or the availability of so many different OSes?
You could have stopped there.
Then why are you here?
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.osnews.com
Edited 2009-04-10 20:25 UTC
Haha, nice one.
Having been involved in IT for a long time now, I’ve learned not to hate the content producers for choices the IT department has made, and not to hate the IT department for choices the content producers have made.
Uhmm… Why? Its a pretty versatile kernel. Like the other posters have pointed out, its pretty much impossible to use the web without hitting something running linux. If you prefer *BSD, Mac or windows, great but no need to hate.
Soon as I saw Michael Arrington’s name on this I immediately said no thanks. I don’t like him or his site.
Put all your gamin PDFs on it and use it for GMing or playing your tabletop gaming sessions, then go to work and use my personally written Ruby apps for trackiing and calculating drug doses on the floors in the hospital. Use the built-in wireless to beam back the calcs and data to my database…i could do my work from anywhere in the hospital…sweet!
I always get excited whennew gadgets come out or are leaked..vaporware or not, at least it shows that people are thinking about stuff…
As for Windows 7, who cares? Before drawing that from its holster, y’all might wanna read the articles regarding the target audience…
FTA…
Everything that *who* uses every day? This looks like it might be good for a college student who actually has time for the above. I agree that it is a neat little toy, much like the iphone. As another poster said it could be used for web interfaces to corporate applications as well, such as for doctor’s and nurses. Though I guess it could make a good first computer for a kid or high school student as well.
Be did this already. And they did it well ( I used to own one of the prototypes ).
Be, INC was ahead of its time – so sad. Good people with good ideas and excellent follow through – just bad market realities
Oh well, either way, Be’s BeIA pad was cool as hades, and I bet this thing is probably at least somewhat as cool. Question is who will buy it?
At $300 it is a worthwhile consideration for the budget crowd and even some businesses, much more than that and we have troubles.
–The loon
I only saw the $300 number mentioned in some poster’s comments: nothing in either one of the two linked articles mentions that number, though their goal was to be able to make them for $200: I suppose $100 is a decent enough markup, and may actually allow them to break even after all the promotion costs and whatnot but nowhere in those two linked articles (articles, not comments!) is $300 ever mentioned. And… just because the goal is $200 way back when the first one was posted, means it was only a goal.
Seriously, though: I’d be surprised if they could make any money, or even make one, period, sold at $300/each. If they could commit to larger quantity hardware purchases because they had clout, it just might happen, but it’d be useful to compare their target price and their hardware in comparison with what it costs Apple (who has a history of having sufficient volumes of purchases, and has the means to make them readily ahead of time) to make an iPod Touch, the closest equivalent in hardware capacity, since the CrunchPad as envisioned in the original article has just 512 MB RAM.
Bah, checking details is so tedious
Yes. That bezel is breathtaking!
Geez… It’s just a touchscreen with a bezel — like many other touchscreen devices.
The red one looks like an etch-a-sketch without the knobs.
Edited 2009-04-10 18:56 UTC
You made my day!
I agree with a previous post that it’s not a dramatic new design or “breathtaking” by any means.