TechCrunch Wants To Create an Open Source Tablet 160
RKo618 writes "TechCrunch announced that they are planning to design their own $200 web tablet device. Quoting: 'The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.' The aim is for the tablet to run on modified open source software, which will be released back to the community along with the specifications for the hardware."
Hopefully they will get it right. (Score:5, Interesting)
They have to compete with the N770 and N800 both that run open source software and both already have a very large installed base of users.
They have to compete with that, so they really need to get it right. I love my N770 except for battery life. I wish these things could go at least 3 days between charges.
Re:Hopefully they will get it right. (Score:2, Interesting)
They also have to compete with the latest "portable media-players" like the Archos Generation 5. I got a 605 Wifi [archos.com] for birthday. It comes with a 30GB HD and touchscreen and runs Qtopia Linux (unofficial hack.)
They sell for 200 Euro here in Germany.
Where have all the PDAs gone? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think these things would be more useful going the thin-client approach. E.g., just use it to ssh+vnc into a persistent desktop on your home PC. That way you have all your settings preserved, and the performance will likely be much better for anything more complicated than reading.
I think the opera browser for most smartphones / blackberries use a thin client approach, where they render your web page on their servers and send screenscrapes to your device which you can pan and zoom around in their interface.
Anyway, I've been looking for something to eventually replace my Palm T|X, and don't really see anything I like too much. The N810 looks nice, but seems like the PIM functionality will be taking a step back from what I have now (granted it wasn't really designed for PIM at all to begin with).
let me get his right (Score:4, Interesting)
a technology blog wants to create a device?
yea right seems like linkbait to get more ad impressions (open that site while having firebug open they load so much ad shit)
Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
I want a 9" iPod Touch.
Make a Linux based one with a glass screen and multi-touch that has that level of polish, and that level of simplicity and people will be interested.
Give them plain ol' Firefox on a lousy LCD with a resistive touch screen and it'll have the same success every other internet tablet has had... ie, it'll end up on TigerDirect at 80% off.
More power to them, but they need to scrap their list of requirements and put one thing at the very top: usability. If it doesn't have the UX and physical usability of an iPod Touch (where my grandmother could figure it out), its missed the boat. If the software is getting less than 95% of the attention, then they've missed the boat.
Re:Hopefully they will get it right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Skype isn't Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's problem is Windows... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's problem in handhelds is Windows. They don't want the Windows Mobile based devices to become laptop replacements, because that would compete with Windows sales, but they want them to be recognizably Windows to both make development easier and to promote the brand.
Windows Mobile loses because Windows CE is just not reliable and solid enough to serve both the needs of a mobile phone and the needs of a general-purpose handheld. Palm didn't have this problem nearly as badly because PalmOS ran under a real time OS (AMX) that you couldn't get into from user applications... the whole Palm environment is just one task for AMX.
Take away the phone, and just worry about making a PDA, and you get a lot more freedom. The iPod Touch has really got more potential to benefit from iPhone apps than the iPhone, because it's not such a critical device. In the Pocket PC WinCE would have been fine if ActiveSync worked as well as Palm HotSync, so your ActiveSync repository served as a complete backup for everything on your Pocket PC... losing data every time I ran my battery flat was what drove me back to PalmOS for my PDA. So the Pocket PC loses because Microsoft didn't make it good enough to run standalone, and didn't make PC-side software good enough that you didn't care.
Going to a tablet, and you get even more freedom. Before "Tablet PC" there were Windows CE based clamshells and tablets that were quite capable, but Microsoft pretty much nuked them by loading the Pocket PC software down with restrictions (both technical and contractual) that meant the Windows CE based tablets were stuck with the previous generation of Windows Mobile software. Of course, they wanted their flagship product on the Tablet PC, not this stripped down embedded-only Windows CE.
I don't know if a browser-only tablet is a good solution, but a tablet is so far from the iPhone or Windows Mobile that trying to draw analogies between them is misleading at best... even if Microsoft hadn't continually undercut Windows Mobile to keep it from even potentially cannibalizing their flagship product.
Re:Kinda like the N800? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the mockup pictures in TFA, it looks to me like the device they are proposing is on the order of 4-5 times the size of the Nokia family. This doesn't appear to be a pocket form factor device, but rather a true tablet.