Crunchpad is now kept alive by sponsorship

The Crunchpad is very alive and will be priced at under $400

The CrunchPad is a 12-inch tablet which was developed by a company called Fusion Garage. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch (which operates a number of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media), is believed to be the brainchild behind the CrunchPad. The idea was fine, but after a while, due to lack of funds and support, the project seemed to be dead.

Now UMPCPortal reports of a videocast by Steve Gillmor that had people like Mike Arrington and P Rangaswami talking about the Crunchpad, and it reveals that after the project has started to see light at the end of the tunnel. The costs seem to be coming down, and it’s planning to be run on soft revenues and sponsorships. It is expected to sell at a range between $300 and $400 and the rest would be in form of ad-supported without impacting the user experience.

The CrunchPad sports a 12-inch touchscreen display and powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM. The operating system on this device has been developed in-house. The device lacks a physical keyboard which means the user will have to input everything using the on-screen keyboard. The users can however add an external keyboard or a mouse through the USB port available on this device. The device weighs just 1.2Kgs with dimensions 12.77-inch x 7.83-inch x 0.74-inch. For connectivity the device has built-in Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, although the format involved is unknown but, an international reach may indicate HSPA connectivity.

It seems that the Crunchpad folks are working on the software part more closely at this point of time. The lowering cost of making it may bring the retail cost down. Also lower will be the power usage which should increase the battery life. Note that this is a web-only device; it only has browsers with which you can browse the web.