I was just wondering what happened to the once fabled then leaked Crunchpad, when low and behold Arrington and crew go and announce a final design for the device. Unfortunately, these are just conceptual drawings, but they say they’ll show off a working prototype in a few weeks.  Taking one out of Apple’s playbook they’ve now opted for an aluminum case and shaved the device’s thickness to just 18mm (that’s just 6mm thicker than the iPhone 3G).  I’m excited to see the prototype Crunchpad in action and until then we’ll just have to settle for the below video, which shows off the Linux OS and what appears to be a final version of the device, although it really isn’t clear.

Skeptical?  I am a bit.  I know it’s not designed for word processing, blogging or video gaming, but the virtual keyboard looks fiddly as does the gesture based commands.  I’m also wondering what happens when Apple finally unveils a tablet device?  Will Crunchpad become the Newton of PDAs?  Lastly, given its slender size and probably energy efficient processor, can the Crunchpad really handle YouTube video?  If based on the below video, I’d say no.

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