CrunchPad Prototype | Hacker News Reader

CrunchPad Prototype

techcrunch.com

123 pointseo52 comments

Its hard to believe it will sell for <$200 / without being locked to some sort of contract or homepage with ads etc ... If so - this is truly an amazing achievement, not to mention its amazing that its techcrunch.

Nothing wrong with having a home page with ads if it brings the cost down.

Nothing a hex editor can't fix (or one line in /etc/hosts ;-)

It's a technique used by Dell and other PC makers for years. It's a nuisance, but if cost is a factor, it can be worth the 20 minutes it takes to clean the crap off.

I don't think that makes sense.

Dell are bought by "The general public", who often don't know how to clean the crap off. So some of it sticks, and they make money.

The crunchpad however, is going to be bought by techie geeks. If it comes loaded with adverts, everyone will just remove them, and they won't make any money.

This is a technically amazing achievement, but IMHO the market does not exist. They'll sell a few, but nothing major.

Dell are bought by "The general public", who often don't know how to clean the crap off. So some of it sticks, and they make money.

This assumes Dell isn't paid just for the privilege of being on their desktop. I kinda think they are.

That's a measurable though. If Crunchpad was paid to have something on it, then they measured that no one actually left it on there, they would probably stop paying pretty quickly.

I'd certainly choose this over, say, a Kindle. If they can actually deliver, and at the price they've bandied about, I'd love to have one.

One big bonus for the kindle is the battery life (2 weeks? vs a few hours). Obviously, the crunchpad has lots of other things going for it. I guess my point is that they're really meant for two different purposes.

If the thing is meant to live on your coffee table and couch, then a couple of hours is good enough. Just design an attractive charging station/stand so it can charge while it goes into "picture frame mode."

Another stand so that it can be used as some kind of secondary display would be cool. (Maybe not a real display, but one driven by something like VNC?)

If it runs Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, just use synergy. It lets you share keyboard and mouse between several systems. It's awesome. The kind of OSS software I'd love to pay for.

OK, valid point. I have a Game Boy and a Nintendo DS for composing chiptunes. I only have to charge the Game Boy batteries every two weeks or so. The DS has to be charged every couple of days. I pretty much only use the Game Boy. And, it has almost nothing else going for it...it's bigger, crappier screen, noisier audio, etc. (The DS is emulating a Game Boy, though, and it has quirks, so that's another negative for the DS.)

One does expect "books" to just work.

What do you use to compose the chiptunes? I was never able to find a copy of LSD for sale.

> Obviously, the crunchpad has lots of other things going for it.

Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it: I don't expect this thing to make it to market.

At the expected price point, or at all? Could you articulate why?

Sure. It certainly will not be a quality product at that price point. And if it costs much more, it will not be competitive. I am anticipating a debacle in which they realize that they can't turn a profit by selling the device for any less than $600, making it a flop: Stores don't order products they know they can't move.

Best-case scenario is a Zune-like reception.

I'm not sure where they plan on having it manufactured but if they're first time overseas manufacturing virgins, I'm guessing "quailty fade"[1] will hit them like a freight train. If they do go on sale, buy one from the first run.

[1] Quality fade is the odd phenomenon where your first batch of manufactured goods from the asain factory is fantastic. You pop champagne, sell the first couple thousand at a tidy profit and the world's your oyster. Over the next few successive shipments, the quality of the products deteriorates until they barely remain assembled during shipping. The dirty trick was that the factory took a huge loss making that first run out of quality materials but then slowly substituted inferior parts without informing you until it became profitable for them.

$600 sounds plausible to me -- after all, the $100 laptop cost more like $200 when it was done. If a netbook with aluminium case, VIA Nano processor and 12" touchscreen was profitable to manufacture at $300, one of the Asian companies would already be selling them, I suppose.

It'd be great if it (or v2) has one of those Pixel Qi or OLPC XO screens. Better compromise between E-Ink's (sunlight) readability & low power consumption, and LCDs' refresh rate & color production.

Amen.

TC people, if you read this, get a hybrid screen like the Pixel Qi and I would gladly pay $500 for a Crunchpad.

Latest design is looking sweet. Ender would be proud!

They're definitely two different beasts.

Kindle if you plan on reading a lot. Doing real reading on E-Ink is much, much, much nicer than reading from an LCD.

CrunchPad if you want to browse the internet, and pretty much do anything else (within it's capabilities that is).

Am planning on getting a DX for reading books and research papers, however... the CrunchPad would be a great item for the coffee table, or... bathroom :)

what is the speculative price?

$300 last I heard. It creeped up from the original $200. But $300 is still well within the realm of "awesome".

$300 is a completely awesome price. The closest alternative (Wifi touchscreen PC) is Asus EEE Top PC at $500: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220...

And CrunchPad sounds a lot more usable than carrying a bulky touchscreen.

Always Innovating has a detachable-touchscreen netbook for $400

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/

And that piece has just an 8,9" screen and an ARM processor.

Replying to ieatpaste because of nesting limits:

The Always Innovating Touch Book looks pretty good but it's on Pre-Order. Asus is currently available in the market.

It's not a "nesting limit", it's a cooling-off period before the reply link is shown, which increases with nesting. It's supposed to discourage heated back-and-forth replies, which historically have low value. Replying a level up defeats the purpose.

PG, if you're reading: Instead of delaying the display of the reply link, it might be better to instead display the link, but during the cooling-off period make it go to a page explaining why the user can't post right away. (And maybe also make the link a different color?) Otherwise, it simply looks like a bug or artificial system limit.

What about consumption and/or heat dissipation? I'd hate to burn my hands while playing youtube videos...

What a gorgeous digital photo frame this would make! I look forward to pointing this at a Flickr (or other) slideshow. In fact someone in another corner of the country or the world could keep this pointed at your Flickr photo stream and will be able to see your latest photos without doing a thing. Similar to what Picwing was offering.

The software demo from April is pretty interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-0Nce5oTQ

Everything goes through the browser. It remains to be seen whether that is the brilliant constraint that makes a category, or a crippling limitation.

I see the USB port is still there :)

Wonder how they will handle storage - suppose I see an image I want to save or stuff I wish to copy/paste and send via gmail. I get that there is no local storage but I hope it will allow inter-process operability.

Clearly it should support copy/paste, but on a Web 2.0 tablet I think saving could be replaced with bookmarking/sharing.

Oh yeah. I meant save-to-picasa or such, not locally. Sorry.

Well if it's linux-based, would be nice if you could mount network/samba shares and save to those as well.

18mm thick — about 3/4 of an inch. Hopefully it'll be light too.

I'm impressed. Maybe this TechCrunch tablet has potential after all.

I noticed that price wasn't mentioned this time. I'm guessing that means it'll cost a lot more than $200.

I wonder if it bears any relationship with the view sonic thingey that is unavailable on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-airpanel-V150-Smart-Display/...

Maybe it's me, but I don't understand the appeal of this type of computer at all. Granted, I also don't understand the appeal netbooks, so maybe I'm way out in left field.

This thing seems like it's a big iphone. I already have an iphone and it meets most of my general quick-fix internet needs. I have a laptop when the iphone isn't sufficient. I just don't see the need for another device in the mix. Unless the pad is easily converted to a moderately powered computer by adding a quick keyboard and mouse, I wouldn't even entertain the idea of buying one.

Okay, so you won't buy one. But I would, just to websurf sitting on the couch. I want a form factor like a magazine or book, not a 5 pound laptop.

Nice picture there. Has it got velcro on the back or something? Because I can see it slipping down her leg and falling on the floor pretty quickly.

Stylus support and therefore support to take notes while on the road would be the feature that makes me lay down even $400 for this thing.

It looks pretty good, but I still maintain my position from last summer, which was that this will never cost $200. Of course, that's fine, as I would not expect a device like this to cost that much to begin with. About $400 seems like the 'right' price for something like this.

Will the screen really look that nice from those viewing angles? If so, it will be a Kindle killer.

Quit with the hyperbole. It's not even in the same market as the Kindle. The battery life? Good screen for prolonged reading?

I was trying to say "shopped" without actually using that word.

Hm, did you see in the promotion video of the Software how much the video was bucking especially at full screen?

I think that the CrunchPad will be quite interesting for Websites but not so for multimedia applications in the beginning.

Hope I am wrong though.

3com Audrey take 2?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Com_Audrey

The internet has changed greatly since then. I guess that is why the netbooks are taking off.

conceptual designs to first working prototype is often a time fraught with problems. I seriously doubt this will be a few weeks and even more doubt the price. It could sell for much more, so why make it so low?

I'm not sure it could. That is, it would sell some at many ranges because it's unique. But I do think price sensitivity will be huge here. In other words, I am guessing every dollar they knock off the price tag will mean a big difference in the number of sales.

I will buy one if and only if I can install my own software on it.

I like the prototype C better (the one in the videos)

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