{"id":1806,"date":"2009-01-19T22:05:52","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T22:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/19\/the-techcrunch-crunchpad-is-the-future-of-fabrication\/"},"modified":"2009-01-19T22:05:52","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T22:05:52","slug":"the-techcrunch-crunchpad-is-the-future-of-fabrication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/01\/the-techcrunch-crunchpad-is-the-future-of-fabrication\/","title":{"rendered":"The TechCrunch CrunchPad Is The Future of Fabrication"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fair amount of buzz today over Michael Arrington\u2019s posting of details of his Tablet Computing prototype over on TechCrunch<\/a>. Arrington is looking to make a slate-style touch screen device, running at 1024×768, and booting directly to a Webkit based browser. It looks ungainly now \u2013 although I think the Duplo based stand (*) in the demo video<\/a> should be included in the retail pack \u2013 but his target of $300 retail price is ambitious and places it in the impulse buy in many tech stores.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to go down the route of many blogs that are trying to add in more features (why not use Android<\/a>), that are comparing it to existing tech like the Asus (it will never work<\/a>) or that nobody bought this ten years ago (it\u2019s not really original<\/a>). What I wanted to talk about was the simple fact that Arrington has just went out and made<\/em> the machine that suits him<\/em> perfectly.<\/p>\n

This is what I see the future of Consumer Electronics \u2013 the ability to mould your own device. Thanks to the Linux movement, one of the three main legs of any product, the software<\/strong>, is taken care of. Any equipment manufacturer can sort out a working operating system and tailor it to their needs. In the case of the CrunchPad, a basic Linux install with just the web browser is an easy ask for an OS.<\/p>\n

Distribution<\/strong>, and the associated promotion and selling, is taken care of on the web \u2013 yes this is TechCrunch but anyone now has a way to reach the people who you think want your device.<\/p>\n

The final leg here is hardware<\/strong>, and this is what I think is going to change over the next few years, allows individuals to put together small runs of equipment to a unique specification. This is still quite costly, but is certainly coming down compared to when I was involved with looking at PDA design and building seven or so years ago (and there is a story in there, but that is<\/em> for another time).<\/p>\n

Arrington is struggling to keep the build cost down, but I admire his tenacity. It will be interesting to follow the progress if does decide to move into either a limited (1000 units) or a full production. I wish him luck. <\/p>\n

(*) Why does Arrington have Duplo around? Lego Technic I could understand, or even regular Lego, but those are the big pre-school sized bricks. Should I be searching for CrunchBaby<\/strong>?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fair amount of buzz today over Michael Arrington\u2019s posting of details of his Tablet Computing prototype over on TechCrunch. Arrington is looking to make a slate-style touch screen device, running at 1024×768, and booting directly to a Webkit based browser. It looks ungainly now \u2013 although I think the Duplo based stand (*) in the demo video should be included in the retail pack \u2013 but his target of $300 retail price is ambitious and places it in the impulse buy in many tech stores. I\u2019m not going to go down the route of many blogs that are trying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[666,4,575,112],"tags":[738,739,353,236,541,740,741,83],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux-pocket-computers-and-phones","category-pocket-computers-and-phones","category-netbook-pocket-computers-and-phones","category-web-20-news","tag-crunchbaby","tag-crunchpad","tag-linux","tag-michael-arrington","tag-netbook","tag-pda","tag-tablet","tag-techcrunch","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-t8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}