It's not often bloggers get into PC design, but TechCrunch has just updated us on what it's now calling the CrunchPad. It says:
The idea is to get a new type of device into people's hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf.
Fair enough, except for the bit about it being a "new type of device". It's actually an old type of device, tried previously in the Geode chip-based WebPad reference design and Microsoft's Windows CE-based Companion ideas.
National Semiconductor was showing the reference design for its WebPad back in November 1998, which shows just how far TechCrunch is behind the times.
In a feature in November 2000, I wrote that:
More recently there have been attempts to sell tablet computers as mobile "internet appliances" (IA). This trend started at Comdex two years ago, when National Semiconductor unveiled a reference design for the WebPad as a way of encouraging sales of its Intel-compatible Geode processor (see http://ia.national.com). It was continued last year, when Gates demonstrated "MSN companions" during his keynote speech, using a Compaq device.
Most of these tablets are not PC-compatible but use an operating system requiring fewer, cheaper hardware resources. Examples include Linux, Be's BeOS, and Windows CE. But the market has yet to take off.
Guess what: although I saw a couple of dozen WebPads of various types, I never found anybody who'd actually bought one, and the whole movement crashed and burned.
Times and markets change, of course, but it would be amusing to know if any of the people advocating CrunchPads now either bought a WebPad roughly a decade ago, or -- better still -- rubbished the whole idea.
