And, according John Biggs at Tech Crunch, we will have the answer…. “Soon”.
If you are not familiar with what the Crunchpad is I’ll give you a brief rundown. Back in 2008 Michael Arrington, entrepreneur and founder of Techcrunch partnered up with a company out of Singapore called Fusion Garage to make what they had hoped to be a $200.00 tablet PC. Arrington’s project is based on the idea of making a device that is dead simple to use. Within a month or so of announcing the project we got a first glimpse of the “Prototype A” Crunchpad pictured below.
At the beginning of 2009 we got a glimpse of the Prototype B Crunchpad.
It is looking a bit more polished ostensibly because of the inclusion of Dynacept in the project as the prototype manufacturer for the device. This prototype sports a VIA Nano processor, 12in LCD and is running a customized Ubuntu OS with a Webkit front end. Things picked up pace a bit after that, with the Prototype C showing up in April, and a near final industrial prototype in June.
In July we were told that the price would be closer to $400 per unit, (still not out of the ball park but definitely higher than I wanted to see it) and there would be an announcement for the release in August. Well, August came and went, rumors are flying about usability, hardware configurations possible release dates, and, as was seen on The Business Insider blog, a tweet from a Berry Judge, the chief buyer at Best Buy calling it a “Great Looking Device” and claiming he thinks’ it will be a hit. In September John Biggs did confirm that there were some “bugs” that needed to be addressed and that there would be a delay, and since then the silence has been deafening.
So here it is, November, and after many, many repeated tweets, comments, and emails I have gotten an answer of “Soon”. Will it be soon enough, with more and more diverse products racing to crowd the playing field of the tablet / media / e-reader markets? I guess we will know soon…
Tags: Arrington, Crunch Pad, Dynacept, Fusion Garage, Innovation, Tablet, Tablet Computing, Tablet PC