Did Arrington actually pull off the CrunchPad WiFi tablet?

http://blog.dustincurtis.com/could-arrington-have-pulled-off-the-crunchpad

by dcurtis • 17 years ago

74 50 17 years ago

blog.dustincurtis.com

jpwagner2• 17 years ago

An iphone that does not fit in my pocket...where do i sign up?

DenisM• 17 years ago

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Kindly refrain.

jpwagner2• 17 years ago

Apparently Oscar Wilde said that.

I thought puns were the lowest form of wit.

I also just read that wit is the highest form of sarcasm. Does that make puns a high form of sarcasm?

ibsulon• 17 years ago

Ipod Touch without the music built in... even better!

Actually, I'd prefer this to a netbook, especially if it isn't locked down.

chime• 17 years ago

Even at $300, I would buy 10 of these for my company. Touch-screen + WiFi + Browser = ability for me to get rid of every single bulky PC on our assembly line. If it has USB, then I can hook up a barcode scanner and completely change how our process works. Right now, it is such a hassle to setup a PC with touch-screen and deal with maintenance etc. Good touch-screen LCDs cost $300 at least and it's a pain to deal with the drivers. Netbooks are good but I don't need a keyboard and don't want to deal with a full-fledged OS. Tablets are perfect but so expensive and a hassle to lock-down. Given all the time in the world, I'm sure most of us could rig up something under $500 similar to what the Crunchpad tablet aims to be. But I'd rather get a stable/solid system that I can easily buy more of when needed.

crossing fingers

noonespecial• 17 years ago

I was kind of hoping the picwing guys would get it together and I could use smartframes for this kind of thing. They seemed closer to a real product.

jerf• 17 years ago

If the topmost port in the fourth picture of http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/19/techcrunch-tablet-updat... is not a USB port, I don't know what it is. Since a barcode scanner is basically a keyboard, you almost certainly don't even need any extra support from them. I think you're in luck.

(Also, I don't want to make a separate post: That link also says "we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic".)

sjs382• 17 years ago

I'm also crossing my fingers. This would make my startup MUCH more easy to get going.

noodle• 17 years ago

regardless of arrington's involvement, i really like this idea and really would like to see it have at least some success. it could only mean good things for the direction of netbooks.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

Looks like the world's biggest iPhone.

hotpockets• 17 years ago

I am going to buy one just to use it as a huge novelty phone gag.

lsb• 17 years ago

It looks so slick, and then picture 4 is the power adapter with a guy holding a soda can in his crotch at the top of the frame.

What's amazing about Apple (from whom they seem to have taken packaging design cues) is not an initial sheen of beauty, but that they keep the beauty going throughout the experience.

rms2• 17 years ago

Where are they getting the touch screens?

wmf• 17 years ago

Does it matter? Aren't they a commodity?

rms2• 17 years ago

A year ago when this was conceived, no, not really, but it looks like the price has indeed come down sufficiently to make this viable. http://interstore.com/product/139-1460/348348-001+LCD+KIT+R/... is one I found.

icey2• 17 years ago

If this thing is real, I'm going to be buying more than a few of them.

merrick33• 17 years ago

so where exactly is the address to his posterous account? I only knew of the techcrunch.posterous.com account.

dchest• 17 years ago

Photos were there (at techcrunch.posterous.com), but it seems like he removed them.

jrnkntl3• 17 years ago

As stated in the comments over there: it's a mockup. And I'm pretty sure it is, been a while since an update on the crunchpads and all of a sudden they're in production? Nahhh, don't think so.

st3fan• 17 years ago

I'll believe it when I have one in my hands :-)

nanexcool• 17 years ago

If the $200 price tag is real, I see myself putting one of these babies in my bathroom in front of the toilet, another one in my kitchen. Imagine one in your living room hooked up to your media center/TV/etc.

icey2• 17 years ago

I'll hang one in my garage for when I'm out working on something... At 200 bucks, if it gets a little motor oil on the screen, I'm not going to worry about it too much.

andr• 17 years ago

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/19/techcrunch-tablet-updat...

Info on an earlier prototype + video. 3 months ago the software was pretty workable and the had the hardware, albeit thicker than it should've been. So it seems perfectly plausible that it's ready now.

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

They should add two white knobs along the bottom ... and an accelerometer that allows you to hold it over your head and shake it to put it into screensaver mode ...

catone2• 17 years ago

TechCrunch would never respect a company asking them to take down leaked photos... and these weren't leaked, they were published publicly. By which I mean: Can someone who has local copies of these put them up somewhere? (Dustin?)

I'd be interested to see them.

Also, not sure what the netbook comment in the post really means. It was pretty evident how big netbooks were going to be after the first Eee PC went for sale, which was late 2007. But that doesn't really matter, since Arrington's tablet isn't really anything like a netbook (at least, not as they're traditionally defined now).

We're going to start to see a lot of cheap, touchscreen tablet PCs running Linux and Android (and maybe Windows 7), though, over the next couple of years.

wave• 17 years ago

It is nicely designed. Here is what it looks like:

http://zee.posterous.com/did-arrington-actually-pull-off-the...

catone2• 17 years ago

Thanks! Those looks pretty slick.

jrnkntl3• 17 years ago

And this is what the packaging looks like: http://bit.ly/WTxHK

[update] pictures are back up at the original posting

dcurtis2• 17 years ago

If I was going to launch something like this, I'd want to keep it secret until it was ready for market. Arrington obviously made a mistake by posting the photos, and it ruined the surprise.

I took them down to be nice. TechCrunch has never done me harm. But I put them back up because they seem to have propagated everywhere now.

jonursenbach• 17 years ago

No he leaked them on purpose to drive up interest in the project. What we're all doing right now is exactly what he wants.

Jigta• 17 years ago

If thats the case, you should have updated the post saying "seeing as how the photos are now everywhere, Im putting the pictures back up."

jrnkntl3• 17 years ago

Wow, the pictures are already taken off.

erlanger• 17 years ago

Reminds me of the original iBook...antiquated design.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

I would buy one if I could take hand-written notes on it. That's the ability that I most envy my friends with tablets for.

noaharc• 17 years ago

I think it is astounding that Arrington (and everyone else on the team -- I'm sure there are many) was able to pull this off. A lot of people have bones to pick with him, and he can certainly be a little brusque (speaking as a former TechCrunch intern), but he is one incredibly capable guy -- a consistently excellent writer, bitingly funny commentator, and, apparently, a mean product designer/manager. I almost wish TechCrunch didn't take up so much of his time -- there's probably a lot more he could be doing.

ktharavaad• 17 years ago

I want one.

shimi• 17 years ago

What's the difference between that and a Windows Tablet (apart from the price)?

simonk• 17 years ago

Besides it running on Linux not a whole lot. But its $200 that was the whole point.

blasdel• 17 years ago

Capacitive touchscreen! I was pleasantly surprised, I thought it would be resistive. Almost all Windows Tablets have inductive digitizers, where you can only use a special stylus (like a Wacom), but you get angle/distance/pressure information.

Most new Tablet PCs also cost 6-10 times more, and have awful battery life because they are overpowered.

vaksel3• 17 years ago

I actually own crunchpad.com, wonder if I should do anything with it

netcan• 17 years ago

redirected it to the blog post?

vaksel3• 17 years ago

already doing that

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

Now I just have to figure out how to waterproof it so I can read The Economist in the tub.

BRadmin• 17 years ago

CrunchGear post about it: "Leaks are always hardest when they hit home."

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/09/crunchtablet-hits-the-n...

rjurney• 17 years ago

For $200 a pop I can tile one wall of my office with them for $16,000.

That sounded smart before I typed it.

Did Arrington actually pull off the CrunchPad WiFi tablet?

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