In the future, you should actually use a device before you decide to post a review or an opinion of that device. I am a recent Chumby owner (and a gadget fanatic, but NOT a programmer or hacker) and I have to say that the device is an amazing and very useful little invention. I have an iPhone, a Nokia internet tablet, a laptop, I’ve owned more PDAs than I care to remember, I just ordered a UMPC…and on and on…

Chumby is not meant to replace a cell phone, and no cell phone can do what Chumby does. It is a brilliant, inexpensive, easily configured, and endlessly entertaining gadget. My chumby wakes me up every morning with my favorite streaming internet radio station, and then for an hour displays the widgets in my “good morning channel.” I can see at a glance the weather in my town, the appointments on my calendar, the to dos on my to do list, the word of the day, a configurable countdown timer (set to my next vacation/holiday), and the headlines for the top news stories. After an hour, it switches to my “information” channel, with more news, tech news, calendar and to do, etc. At mid-day, it changes channels again so I can see more media and entertainment type widgets, like astronomy picture of the day, webcams from interesting places, articles from the onion, etc. It will change back to the “information” channel late afternoon, then at 9:00pm it switches to “night mode” where it looks and behaves just like a clock radio, waiting for he morning alarm to re-start the cycle.

And at any time, regardless of the channel that is playing, I can stream music from the internet or my media server, plug my iPod into ine of the USB ports and stream from it, or play games on the screen.

My 9 year old son has asked for one for his birthday!

You should ask (nicely) if the folks at Chumby will loan you one to play with. Then maybe you can write a real review or at least have a more formed opinion.

But even so, Stefan, You could have avoided the headache caused by Seth if you would have just highlighted the device and then posted your opinion by form of comment. Then you would have justified the device and allowed others to make their own statement acordingly while still getting your point across. Even though i totally agree with you on this one, you could have taken a different aproach.

Also, I don’t agree that it’s a waste of money (if you have money for luxury items). I paid $250 USD for a Sirius Sattelite radio (in dash receiver) and $13/month for the last 4 years just to get dynamically presented information – why don’t I just get a bluetooth receiver and adapt it to play the audio from my HTC Shadow (smartphone) on shuffle? because I don’t want to mess around with all that crap just to tie up my phone and get me into an accident while trying to change tracks!

I can’t image keeping a mobile phone on all night and propping it up so I can see the time. I’m sure being awakened in the middle of the night by a wrong number would be a joy… I don’t think comparing a Chumby to a mobile phone makes any sense. A Chumby is a Chumby–there’s nothing else like it to even compare to.

“And when you use arguments like “if you were continental like me, you’d see truth, you Ugly American.”"

Not me. I’m not calling anyone an ugly American, just pointing out two different [EU vs US] markets have two totally different usage patterns.

Your argument is essentially “Anyone who would spend $300 on a snowblower would be much better off spending $300 on an attachment for their existing lawnmower because having more than one power tool in your shed is what losers do.” Which is exactly the argument someone who has never shoveled a driveway would make.

They would, however, likely stop short of condemning the snowblower industry.

As to “anti American comments”… I’m not the one who said “Europe is a totally different ballgame. The first thing people touch when they way up is their mobile phone to silence the alarm which they set before sleeping. A mobile phone is a persons portal to the world, here at least.” My argument wasn’t anti-American, pro-American or anywhere in between. My argument was that insisting things conform to your worldview when your worldview isn’t the one being marketed to is… childish.

I’m sensing a theme.

As for Seth, I’m not going to dignify the anti American comments, I lived there for over 15 years and only recently, as in last July, left for Finland. I’m pointing out the difference in usage models and if you can’t see that … I don’t know what to tell you.

Yes, it’s a geeky device and I got one as an interesting gadget but since then the number of widgets has exploded and the ability to ‘hack’ the hardware makes it something many people would find good on their desk.

Even my wife now uses it for checking email, calendars, listening to the radio and so much more. And she’s NO geek – trust me.

OK, I fully understand that you don’t like the idea of being grounded to the power (you’re obviously live mobile phones judging by your profile) but most people find they are only useful for making calls after a month or two (I have many friends with expensive Nokias that ONLY make calls these days).
BUT, what I don’t understand is that if you’re a techno geek (more than just mobiles) you don’t see what the Chumby is trying to and not to be.
I’ve never bought a phone that browses well etc but I understand why they are still good gadgets etc.

Dunno. I never had any interest in buying any other “internet appliances.”

What makes the iPod different from all other MP3 players?

Dunno. But they sure have sold a lot of them. And iPods don’t even have radios.

I’ve owned touchscreen smartphones since 2002 (five of them – not a one of them Nokia. Feel the burn, punk!). I’m all about convergence… but sometimes it doesn’t make sense. For starters, the Chumby’s screen is bigger than something I’d want to carry around anyway. For another thing, nobody mentioned Europe. A tiny company with $12m in 2nd round VC funding isn’t exactly geared to take over the world one time zone at a time. Finally, I see two dozen third party apps up on the S60’s site… and I see two dozen new third party widgets up on Chumby’s site since FEBRUARY. Best get evengelizin’, holmes. I’d maybe work on the people skills a tad – frankly, your rant makes no sense to me because you use words like “convergionist” and think they actually mean something. And when you use arguments like “if you were continental like me, you’d see truth, you Ugly American.”

While I may appear far from the mainstream to you, Europe is a totally different ballgame. The first thing people touch when they way up is their mobile phone to silence the alarm which they set before sleeping. A mobile phone is a persons portal to the world, here at least.

This isn’t about the alarm clock however, it is about the “plenty of room for hunks-o-hardware that do other things well” argument. Either your a separatist or a convergionist, meaning you want dedicated hardware for certain tasks or you want one device to rule them all.

You fall in the first category, I fall in the second. My rant makes no sense to you in much the same way that your purchase decisions make no sense to me.

Your rant makes no sense because you’re not representing anything close to a mainstream audience. To most folks, a mobile phone isn’t the end-all be-all. It basically sucks at everything except being a phone.

I don’t use my phone as an alarm clock. I have to reach over and grab it to read it and the display is still too small to read easily with blurry night eyes.

Nor do I use my Nokia tablet all that often. Yeah, it’s cool. But it crashes all the friggin’ time. It’s been replaced by my Chumby for catching up on things in the morning and by an Asus Eee for anything harder than email/RSS. It’s not that my Nokia doesn’t do a load of things, but it just doesn’t do any of those well.

That leaves plenty of room for hunks-o-hardware that do other things well. The Chumby does what it does really well.

As to successful internet appliances, can’t think of any. But that was once true of laptops and even desktops at one time. The Chumby may well fail, but it’s got the best shot at being a successful internet appliance that I’ve seen. And I’m geekier than you are. (Unless you have an Altair within reach right now. I do.)

Precisely why the rant I pitched makes no sense to you, at all.

What makes this internet appliance different from all the other ones? More importantly name one internet appliance that was successful.

My generation gave your generation wedgies. Prepare for another:

“Someone please tell me what the point of a Chumby is”

- It’s a clock radio from hell. I’ll bet you’ve seen one even if you don’t own one. It tells time. It plays music. It does other things. All without requiring a 2-year commitment and seven kinds of taxes.

“and why people are paying this company to build such a product.”

- because once you spent $150 for the parts you’d have a hard time finding anyone skilled enough to assemble them into something functional and you’d have a harder time finding anyone foolish enough to do it for thirty bucks.

“Your mobile phone is with you no matter where you are,”

- which is why I own one. And when I bought it, I didn’t look for a squishy leather one the size of a grapefruit.

“it is always connected to the internet,”

-and, interestingly, so’s my laptop. Not that that matters. Mostly I use my phone for, you know, calling people.

“if it is fairly decent then it has WiFi,”

-’cuz that internet connection, if it’s EDGE, kinda sucks. Just sayin’.

“stereo speakers,”

- and ’tis truly a sparkling stereophonic image you get out of 4mm piezo drivers spaced an inch apart, ain’t it? Not that Martin Logan has anything to fear from the Chumby. It is, however, the best-sounding clock radio I’ve ever owned *and* I can plug it into my stereo. And then I can leave it there. ‘cuz I have smaller, more expensive things to carry around than a plush wi fi alarm clock.

“a full HTML web browser”

- and ain’t it grand surfing the web on your phone? I wonder why I bought this laptop in the first place…

“and with the ability to accept external storage, such as the 8 GB microSDHC card in my Nokia N82, then it can even replace your MP3 player.”

- Symbian, after all, is an *awesome* way to listen to your toonz. In case you missed it, a Chumby has three USB ports, can tune internet Radio, and will act as a Slimserver client.

***

Look, dude. I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and demand you buy one. It’s certainly not something everybody needs… but out of the box, it’s a pretty perfect li’l internet appliance. Great to have in the kitchen, great to have on your desk at work, great to have on the nightstand in the bedroom. I haven’t tweaked mine one iota, nor am I likely to. I’m rather pleased that the developers are freely available to me (without having to go through an uppity “ambassador” like yourself), that the operating system is being constantly improved, and that the widgets available to me increase daily. I’ve spent $180 on a good meal; I spend $130 a *month* on my cell phone. I’m really pleased with my value-per-dollar out of the silly little thing. Now me? I have no idea why anyone would want a Nokia N72… but I’m not going to get all ad hominem on someone who does.

‘cuz I’m a grownup.