Here’s an interesting post by Techcrunch yesterday, July 21st. Michael Arrington suggests boldly that we should all collaborate and create a web tablet. As you can see from the image above, it’s really pretty. At least the industrial designer did a nice job imagining what it might look like. It looked so cool, in fact, that it caught my eye as I was doing my regular scouring of the tech presses.
“Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.”
I thought to myself, “wow, that OS sounds a lot like Splashtop.” I also wondered how interesting that would be to others. Would people want one? Clearly we all have computers that do what he is describing and this doesn’t seem like a device for developing countries or children. Well, as I write this there are 668 comments on that post. Most of those who joined the conversation thought it was an amazing idea, some debated how possible it would be and others thought that the EeePC already did what Arrington was asking for. In the 3 years (is that possible?) that I’ve been reading Techcrunch, I have never seen 668 comments on a single post. It makes the post almost unusable as the load time and scrolling is slow.
A couple of us commented that Splashtop was a good idea for this project but ultimately I have no idea if it’s the right fit or if that device will ever actually be created. The point, I think, is that the most commented post in the history of one of the most influential tech and web oriented blogs hypothesized a super lightweight OS whose main function was Firefox and Skype. This is Splashtop.
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Good hit, folks!
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 am
I thought of exactly the same. An instant-on Firefox would be more than adequate for such a device.
Now you just need to tune it to “boot” in 1 second or less.
There was a site reporting that going from “button-on” to Firefox still took over 20 seconds on Splashtop.
5 seconds or so to the “main menu”, another 15+ for firefox to launch…
(Is that information accurate? I don’t see any reason why Firefox should take more than a couple of seconds to launch…)
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 am
What do I need to do to enable Splashtop on Webconverger?
July 25th, 2008 at 10:17 am
First time visitor to your blog - you write well, and the topic is great. I’m writing this from splashtop. I just built a new system with an Asus board and it came with this thing called expressgate (which includes splashtop, skype, etc.)
I am *very* impressed with the speed and utility of splashtop. It’s a real simple home appliance that works. Wow:-)
July 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am
@Carlos - They got a pre-production version. The shipping model will be faster. However, it is important to note that every device configuration is different and that will effect boot times. The EeeBox is an awesome entry level desktop but doesn’t have the same configuration as some of the high-end Asus laptops we’re on, for example. Sill, you can expect a super fast Splashtop experience.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:04 am
@AlexM - Thanks for your awesome feedback. I love writing this blog because I think our product is incredible. Please feel free to comment any time with feedback so we can make it even better.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:57 am
I’ve been seeing more and more apps that run within the browser/Firefox. I think this is the trend - no need to download software.
As far as skype, I’m exploring C2Call which is a VOIP within a browser.
Good luck and I look forward to such a device
(naturally bookmarked this blog!)
August 25th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
The ultimate and definitive solution for an innovative ultra thin client .
August 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Splashtop is far the best solution for mobile internet.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:27 am
If only the Nokia N800 were a bit larger it would be that device. Has a lot of potential but being about the size of the iPod Touch/iPhone its definitely not good for long term browsing. As a light reading on the go device it definitely rocks since its running Linux and MicroB (based on Firefox). There are rumors of Google Chrome compiling on it as well since they will be targeting ARM based phones for Android.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I would love to see something similar but with a “base station” - a box with video and audio out connectors to hook up to the TV (presumably connecting to the tablet via RF (if it would have the necessary bandwidth) or 802.11x, bluetooth probably wouldn’t have the range), and maybe a slot to slide the tablet into when not in use for recharging purposes. I think there would be nothing cooler than sitting on the couch using this device as both a remote control for the TV and interface between your tv and media fileserver. Only concern would be how warm it might get decoding say h.264 at 1920×1200 in realtime and transmitting the uncompressed video stream to the base station to be passed on to the TV - although I guess 720×576 would be ample for most people (and me with my current TV to be honest).
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Hey guys if you want to try splashtop, give it a google on the usb version (splashtop on usb). It is very cool I love it and am posting this from my hp-2133 mini-note running a custom usb version of Voodoo IOS and yes firefox/splashtops-browser dose take 15 to 20 sec to load , but I find that opera 9.60 works way faster like 5 sec and if you like faster I also have Dillo going (1 sec)in splashtop as well. I also like having xtem, xpdf, Rox-Filer…ect so I can do other things in splashtop I love splashtop, it’s awesome thank you DeviseVM for all your hard work.