SlashGear Japan
CherryPal’s eponymous PC was touted, back when it was announced in June, as the cloud computing salvation to our power-hungry PCs and delicate local storage. Since then, the only way its enabled us to save money is by not actually going on sale. TG Daily had the 1lb cloud computer land on their doorstep, and there’s good news and bad.
The good is that it exists (though the flip-side to that is the poor build quality, leading to suspicions that mass production still hasn’t started) and that, if you go by a power light and an onscreen desktop, it all works. The bad is that the whole concept – making use of online storage and office applications, rather than relying on expensive local software and storage – is somewhat undermined by Firefox’s sluggish performance.
It’s uncertain whether this is down to the low-power 400MHz Freescale processor or simply the browser’s unhappiness with the particular build of Xubuntu, but either way it’s a big issue when Firefox is your primary method of interaction. TG Daily’s closing thought – that the CherryPal PC “might just work” if you’re looking for a basic, compact cloud computing device – certainly doesn’t fill us with hope.
4 Responses to “CherryPal cloud-computing PC first-impressions suggest mediocre”
Gabe Knuth December 12, 2008
This morning I was checking out Digg and saw a post about something called a CherryPal. Thinking maybe it had something to do with CherryOS, I decided to check it out. What I found had nothing to do with a PowerPC emulator for the PC. In fact, the CherryPal is a device used to connect users to a cloud (not “The” Cloud, since that doesn’t exist).
In the fifteen minutes since I first heard about CherryPal, here’s what I’ve found out: The initial review that I read claims that the device is rather slow, but it appears there is room for improvement. The device runs a triple-core, 400MHz Freescale processor with 256MB of memory and an 8GB solid state drive. Also included in the 10oz, 1.3″ high x 5.8″ long x 4.2″ wide box is 802.11b/g WiFi, 10/100 ethernet, audio out, VGA out, and (only) two USB ports.
Among the applications accessible from the device (whether or not they’re local or in the cloud I’m not sure) are Firefox, OpenOffice, Music Player, MPlayer for CD’s and DVD’s, instant messenging, and Skype.
A large part of the marketing effort for CherryPal is focused on the device being very “green”. The device has no moving parts and only consumes 2 watts of power, which is pretty impressive considering the 500 watt power supplies in the PC’s these days, but nothing new to the thin client world. CherryPal also says the devices use 80% fewer parts and will last for “10 years or more” – another benefit that we’ve heard before.
At first the device seems pretty cool, even though its a new spin on the same old thin client, but there are some glaring shortcomings:
It seems to me like they should include more USB ports, because there’s no way to connect anything to the device after a keyboard and mouse–like a DVD player or an external hard drive.
NeutralA Skype conversation wouldn’t be that useful because there’s no microphone jack on the device, so you’d need to have some sort of supported USB audio device.
That’s all I know about the device for now. I suppose I’ll keep an eye on it and see what happens. If any of you have seen one in action and can share the experience with us, please leave a comment.
Justin Gehring December 17, 2008
I’m more concerned about the sercurity flaw of a default username and password being set, being told not to change it, and then finding out that SSH is enabled for remote access…. That has gaping security hole written all over it… and with no way to rebuild the machine in the event of compromise… I’m not even sure I could get mine up and running again… It’s a scary device.
It’s also slow and underpowered… But I was expecting that from the beginning… I never intended to leave it running it’s default code.
Lastly, the documentation is fairly limited at this point… Especially in the technical arena.
My advice: stay away for now… It has great potential, but has a long way to go to be a technology worth investing in for anything but a toy.
NeutralRyan Schneider December 18, 2008
I received my CherryPal unit earlier this week after a long wait and much anticipation. As already stated, the biggest downfalls are:
- unit is painfully slow (not just FF)
- limited technical documentation
- default password we can’t change supposedly
- how to “restore” the device if it gets compromised or I mess something up installing stuff on it
The slowness is the only one that bothers me at the moment, as that is the only one that can’t be fixed by software patches. I will be writing to CherryPal this weekend to express my concern and feedback.
NeutralDave Schiller January 10, 2009
I paid for mine on July 21 and have still not received it. My wife sent Cherrypal an e-mail Dec. 24 — no reply as of Jan. 10. I’ll be happy to report when it arrives. Meanwhile I’d urge any prospective customers to avoid disappointment and wait to see what happens with this rather dodgy company, which had no qualms about marketing (and selling) a product they could not actually supply — all excuses notwihstanding.
Neutral