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More than one manufacturer are trying to put together a cheap tablet PC. None is more talked about than the TechCrunch CrunchPad, which should sell for about $200. The drive over the last few months behind this project has been Web 2.0 personality Michael Arrington. His goal has always been to create a cheap and inexpensive web tablet. Today, new photos of the device have surfaced. It's called the CrunchPad. Potentially, it could rival entry-level netbooks. Arrington wrote that the machine should be as thin as possible, run on low end hardware and have a single on/off button, headphone jacks, a built-in camera for video, low-end speakers, and a microphone. The CunchPad will also have WiFi, 512MB of memory and a 4GB SSD HD.

The latest photos show that Arrington is getting closer and closer to his finished product. The latest shots show candy-colored devices and a $200 price tag. Arrington plans on making this another one of those open-source hardware projects, so other manufacturers could build on it. When more and more of these types of devices start popping up on the market, we will see a definite improvement in specs and usability. For now, it's interesting to note that the CrunchPad will be a lot cheaper than Amazon's Kindle 2.0, which is absurdly high priced in my book. [via Wired, photos via TechCrunch and Wired]

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