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January 4, 2006The good news about Pepper Pad? Eh… they are still around
Pepper last year at CES unveiled their Pepper Pad, a Linux powered tablet device that aims to allow the user to surf the web from the living room couch. It started shipping in July and would have been utterly forgotten if Nokia wouldn't have launched the highly similar Nokia 770.
At $849 however the Pepper Pad is far more expensive than Nokia's $359 toy. The main differences are that Nokia doesn't offer a hard drive and has a smaller display. But both are designed to allow users to surf the web from the comfort of their living rooms, and both run Linux.
The Pepper said that it has had trouble keeping up with demand, but declined to give out any sales figures that would silence cynical observers.
At the same time it unveiled an additional model, the Pepper Pad Plus. It has a 30 Gb hard drive (up from 20 Gb), Wifi b and g (versus just b in the "regular" version), Bluetooth 2.0 (up from 1.2) and 60 per cent more battery life.
The "Plus" pad is scheduled to start shipping by the second quarter of this year. Pricing information wasn't disclosed. Existing users will receive the option to upgrade their regular Peppers to a Plus version, but again no details about the cost were available.
Tags: nokia 770, pepper pad, ces
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Although it may first appear that the Pepper Pad is in the same genre as the Nokia it really isn't. The internal hard drive allows for local storage so the Pad can be taken on the road for music, video, and photo playback. Also its built-in IR transmitters allow the Pad to be used for media center control of any home entertainment device that uses a standard IR remote control.
The pricing on the Plus unit will stay the same as the current incarnation of the Pad -- $849.
Posted by :Sean | January 20, 2006 3:32 PM