The Archos 5 Internet Tablet is the first Google Android powered tablet from Archos, a company best known for making MP3 players and portable media players. And at it’s core, the Archos 5 Internet tablet is a pretty good media player. It offers all the features you would expect including excellent audio and video playback capabilities and access to online media and files stored on your home network. It even has a built in FM radio tuner.

But what makes the Archos 5 Internet Tablet special is the underlying operating system which allows you to run thousands of Android applications. Out of the box, the tablet has a few Android apps installed including the Android web browser and the eBuddy instant message client. A few hundred more are available from the AppsLib app store. But with a little tweaking you can install the full Android Market, granting you access to many of the 16,000+ applications available for Google Android smartphones.

All this without the need to sign up for a contract with a mobile broadband provider. The lack of a service plan alone would make the Archos 5 one of the cheapest devices to run Google Android, since most Android Smartphones will end up costing you thousands of dollars over a 2 year contract. But with prices ranging between $250 and $500, this Android powered WiFi slate is truly one of the most affordable internet tablets around.

The folks at Archos were kind enough to lend me an internet tablet to review. The demo unit I received has 32GB of storage, an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, 256MB of RAM, 802/11b/g/n WiFi, a USB port, and runs Android 1.6 plus some custom Archos software. You can read the complete review at mobiputing.

Last week the folks at The Business Insider started predicting that Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad tablet was dead. Arrington hadn’t really spoken much about the tablet since this summer, and the Business Insider heard rumors that the rising costs of production were delaying and possibly putting an end to the tablet.

Apparently the reports of the CrunchPad’s death are a bit premature. In this week’s Gillmor Gang video, Arrington says that the CrunchPad is coming along and that it will sell for somewhere between $300 and $400. He says it costs somewhere in the “upper $200s” to build, and that he’s looking at ways to help keep costs down with sponsorship opportunities, sort of the way Firefox makes money for Mozilla through the search box with Google set as the default search engine. Hopefully Arrington is talking about similarly unobtrusive sponsorship.

While the project apparently isn’t dead, I do still think there’s a chance it will be DOA. Arrington says that the CrunchPad, which will feature a 12 inch display and an Intel Atom processor, and a browser will be designed to handle Hulu, YouTube, Gmail, and other web apps. And that’s about it. For $99, I think that would be an awesome device. For $300 to $400 I don’t really see why anyone would buy a dedicated web device instead of a fully functional computer. By the time the CrunchPad is available, you might even be able to pick up a touchscreen tablet style netbook in the $400 range. You can already get the Eee PC T91/T91MT for around $500 to $550.

But Arrington predicts that within a few years web tablets will be just as big as netbooks, with 10s of millions having been sold. It’s not entirely clear whether he’s talking about the CrunchPad alone, or other similar products. He does say that he’s not too concerned about competition from the upcoming Apple Tablet, which he expects to have a smaller screen, but to be significantly more powerful than the CrunchPad while costing 2-3 times as much.

While I’m skeptical that there’s a huge market for web tablets, Arrington does know a thing or two about entrepreneurship. He does run one of the most popular tech blogs on the internet, and blogging is a business he didn’t know much about before he started doing it either. Why not consumer electronics?

You can check out the CrunchPad section of the Gillmor Gang video at about 39 minutes into the video.

via UMPC Portal

You know how Apple’s answer to the netbook phenomenon is supposed to be a touchscreen, internet-connected tablet device? It’s starting to look like Apple might be the last company to introduce of those. Toshiba, TechCrunch, and now HP have all introduced relatively affordable internet tablets. Of course, the HP version looks more like a souped up digital picture frame than a portable tablet, but the new HP DreamScreen is a touchscreen tablet with a remote control that can used throughout the house to stream content from your home network, removable storage cards, or internal storage.

The DreamScreen will come in two size. One model will have a 10.2 inch display and sell for around $249, while a larger version will have a 13.3 inch display and $299 price tag.

Both models will include WiFi, Ethernet, 2GB of built in storage and a media card reader. They feature software for watching videos and visiting web destinations including Pandora, Snapfish, and Facebook. There’s also a new HP SmartRadio feature that lets you connect to about 15,000 internet radio stations from across the globe. They can be sorted by genre or location.

While the DreamScreen 100 has a 10.2 inch display and the DreamScreen 130 has a 13.3 inch screen, both models have 800 x 480 pixel display resolutions, which seems a bit low to me. Both devices also include Ethernet, 8021.11b/g WiFi, and support for MPEG 1,2, 4, and H.264 video as well as JPG, PNG, and BMP images and MP3, WMA, AAC, and WAV audio. They can handle a number of flash card formats including CF, SDHC, Memory Stick, and xD.

There’s no mention of a battery in the spec sheet, but I can’t tell if that’s because the DreamScreen is meant to be plugged in and used at home or if the battery specs simply aren’t available yet. A peek at the back of the unit really does make me think that the DreamScreen is more of a overpowered picture frame than a portable tablet though.

Update: The DreamScreen 100 is available for $249.99 from HP, Amazon, or Best Buy, and the 13 inch DreamScreen 130 is available from HP or Amazon for $299.99.

Update 2: Xavier from GottaBeMobile got to spend some hands-on time with a DreamScreen. You can check out the video after the break. The user interface is pretty slick. But it still comes acros as a consumer electronics device rather than a computer. In other words, I have no idea how difficult it would be to update the software unless HP sends out updates or new features.

One more update: As you can see in the video, the DreamScreen can be controlled with a remote or by hitting some buttons on the frame. The display isn’t a touchscreen.

There are also more images after the break.

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TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington started an intriguing project last summer. The goal was to build a $200 tablet designed for browsing the web, watching online video, and generally doing things that you can do in a browser. The idea was that since the hardware and software didn’t need to support any application other than the web browser, you could cut costs in a lot of areas.

Half a year later, the team working on the TechCrunch tablet (known for now as the CrunchPad) have built a second prototype. Unlike the first prototype which basically turned on and off, the latest CrunchPad is a functional tablet with a 12 inch display, a VIA Nano CPU and a full blown Ubuntu Linux operating system, although the primary interface is a custom web browser that I’m pretty sure is based on Firefox, and an on-screen keyboard.

If Arrington and crew could have pulled this off for the target price of $200, I’d be impressed. But Arrington says if this device actually goes into production, $299 is probably a more realistic price. And at that price, you could probably pick up an 8.9 inch or 10 inch netbook. Sure, there’s some appeal to the idea of a device with a touchscreen and a larger display. But I’m not sure why I would pay $299 for a device that only functions as an internet tablet when I could spend the same kind of money and get a computer that runs native apps as well as web applications, and which comes with a full keyboard making text entry a lot easier than on a hunt and peck onscreen keyboard.

But maybe that’s just me. What do you think? Would you buy a CrunchPad for $299? Let us know in the comments.

And you can check out a video of the prototype in action after the break.

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It’s been a bit over a month since TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced his plans for world domination a $200 internet tablet that does one thing, and does it well – runs a web browser. Arrington’s idea is that you don’t really need a full fledged operating system and the ability to run applications on some portable devices. All you need is the ability to surf the web and access web applications like Zoho or Google Reader. And once you decide that your hardware only needs to support a single application, it should be a lot easier to produce a cheap device.

Now after a month of silence, Arrington has shown a picture of a working prototype. I mean, the picture doesn’t show the computer on. And he hasn’t announced any details about the software (although, I’m pretty sure he wants it to run Firefox if it isn’t already doing so).But he says it works.

The final product will certainly look a lot sleeker than the image above, but apparently the development team needs to spend some time working on the software before working out the hardware details.

Oh, and the most exciting part? Arrington says it should be possible to produce the tablet within the price range he had been hoping for. It’s not 100% clear if that means you’ll be able to buy one for $200 or if it’ll cost about $200 to make one. But as long as the tablet has a decent display resolution, a useful touchscreen, and a long lasting battery, I can certainly see people paying between $200 and $300 for these.

Wht do you think? Would you buy an internet-only tablet, or do you prefer to have a little PC processing power in your portables?

One of the things that makes tiny laptops like the Asus Eee PC exciting is that they are actually full-fledged computers, not just glorified cellphones, PDAs, eBook readers, or other dedicated devices. Intel and others like to call these computers “netbooks,” because they make it easy to connect to the internet but don’t provide a ton of processing power to perform other tasks. But if you want to watch movies, play games, or do some photo and video editing on an Eee PC, nobody’s going to stop you.

That’s why I have mixed feelings about a project Techcrunch founder Mike Arrington is starting. The idea is to develop a $200 tablet PC that’s designed to run one, maybe two programs.

Basically, the tablet would use open source software and hardware, and would run Firefox. You wouldn’t really see the operating system at all. You’d hit the power button, and up would pop Firefox, which would allow you to access web pages and web applications. Need a word processor? Try Google Docs or Zoho. Want to chat with your friends on AOL, MSN, or Yahoo! Instant messengers? There’s always Meebo. Arrington suggests that it might be worth running Skype on the tablet as well, but there are web-based chat, VoIP, and video services, like Tokbox, as well.

In other words, you could certainly make a case that the only computer program you need today is a good web browser. That’s pretty much what Steve Jobs suggested when he first announce the iPhone. The plan was to ship a device with a few preloaded applications and a web browser. If you wanted to write an application that would work with the iPhone, you would write it to work with the Safari web browser and then stick it on the web. But you know what? It didn’t take long for people to start hacking the iPhone and writing native applications. Eventually Apple gave in and began offering an SDK for developers to write applications that would work on the iPhone. Because some things just don’t work as well on the web.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m completely supportive of Arrington’s idea. If he can pull it off (with the help of a small army of volunteers), it would be amazing. But as attractive as a portable, affordable internet tablet would be, I don’t see it taking any market share away from laptops anytime soon. It won’t run some of the applications you’re most familiar with, and more importantly, it will turn into a paperweight if you happen to step away from a WiFi hotspot.

What do you think? Is the world ready for an internet-only tablet device? Would it replace a laptop for you, at least in some circumstances?