TechCrunch lights the way as CrunchPad dies

And so the CrunchPad is placed by it’s spiritual father, Michael Arrington, into the Dead Pool.

I doubt it’s the last we’ll see of the device, but it’s certainly the last we’ll see of it with the CrunchPad moniker. The legalese may be in motion but some warehouse is going to churn these out within six months.

All the real world stuff aside, I’m sad that the CrunchPad isn’t going to be available. Looking at that picture of the circuit board there’s a juicy 1850mah battery, an express PCMCIA 3G card, Intel Atom 1.6 CPU (perhaps a Z or N series?), and it’s already been reported as carrying 1GB ram and 4GB storage… all of which fits in nicely with reports of the software being a customised Webkit based browser on top of an Ubuntu/Linux stack.

Couple that with the 12 inch capacitive touch screen and you had the makings for a nice niche device which might not have went on to sell millions, but could easily reach sales in the six figures. I commented a while ago that this approach, more boutique computing than a Ford assembly line – would be a great step forward. People could choose hardware that suits them, ordering it via a website (thus taking care of distribution) and then selecting the best Operating System for their needs.

The distribution problem, with a keen eye on the web, is sorted. While it’s not perfect, Operating Systems are easily chosen, be they Windows XP, Vista or 7, Ubuntu variants (including Netbook Remix, Jolicloud or Easy Peasy to name three) or even the badge of honour that is the Hackintoch.

It’s still the issue of hardware that’s the logjam. Its not as simple (yet) as handing a list of elements for a factory to bolt together and then waiting for it to arrive, safe in the knowledge that someone else will make a copy to sell in the Far East as you do the unboxing video.

Which is a shame. The CrunchPad was a very visible effort to look at how modern technology is made. Part of me wishes that Arrington had been ultra open, blogging every week on the progress and hiccups. Part of me hopes that at least the Operating System is salvaged and open sourced for the Linux community to work on.

A lot of me also thinks he could have considered keeping the project quiet so he could have walked out and had his own “Just one more thing…” moment.

This was a good swing at the baseball. The CrunchPad may have stuck out, but I’m sure there will be other projects that will follow in the path that’s been lit up.

And, if Arrington is honest, he still has his Tablet PC to use on his sofa. It’s just that he can’t sell them to everyone else.

Related Posts

• The Brand New Dilbert Inspired Netbook For Your Boss
• Wanted, Minister of Culture to claim Twitter