What the TechCrunch Tablet Should Really Look Like

Michael Arrington is understandably pretty excited about how the TechCrunch Tablet is shaping up so far, but to use it seems they’re going about it the wrong way.

For a device that’s supposed to do Firefox, Skype and not much more, an underpowered PC with a touchscreen isn’t going to accomplish much. For one thing, Firefox is a huge performance drain and a memory hog to boot that underpowered hardware (even on-par with an Eee) simply won’t support and for another, there’s no way to get PC hardware down to the sub-$200 price range.

What TechCrunch wants – whether they know it or not – is an oversized PDA, not an underpowered PC. And it’s not just a question of semantics, it’s a question of foundations and principles – and it makes a huge difference in terms of end-user experience and the bottom line.

For the functionality that TechCrunch is trying to pack into this opensource, mass-market web gadget, there’s nothing that wouldn’t work better, faster, and cheaper on specialized hardware rather than on generic PC components.

Continue reading