I haven't received mine yet but will be happy to report on it's performance and useability once it arrives. In particular, I will be having my 9 year old son help me test it extensively to see if it is of any particular use for his market segment- i.e. elementary school children. As the netbooks appear to be all the rage, I have my doubts about this underpowered device, but it's free and I'm happy to be getting one. WE WILL SEE if it is worth the $249 asking price.

What's that I smell, is that the distinct aroma of a high profile scam?? Don't be surprised when December 15th arrives and none of these folks have received anything more than yet another lame excuse as to why they don't yet have the actual product in their hands. This whole thing has seemed way dodgy from the beginning and as time goes by it just gets more and more suspicious.

Alien cos I'm more inclined to believe they have visited us than I am to believe that the cherry pc actually exists.

Interesting that CherryPal would refund the full purchase price of a unit, at this point, rather than ship one of the first units to materialize.

I would guess that availability is tight enough, that an actual working unit is currently worth more to the company than the nominal $250.00 purchase price.

(And after all...if the things turn-out to be really interesting, then the Reg will likely still purchase one at a later date.)

Can't wait to see what sort buzz the brand angels generate. Particularly since a few of them seem to be higher on the first-to-be-supplied list than El Reg.

Paris: Because she knows that some things are worth more than mere money.

given that even the lowliest of new mice gets a comprehensive high-res gallery of ill-lit kitchen table unboxing photos these days, are we now expected to believe that this particular astroturfer (astroblogger?) is not in possession of at least one device capable of capturing a digital image?

My, the smell of bullshit is strong this morning.

mine is scheduled to land on Tuesday, there are some pretty big hopes laid on these little boxes and despite the slightly bumpy taxi to the runway I'm beginning to think that this could really make the long haul flight!

There's a lot of potential there, things like Amazons HITs (tasks better preformed by a human rather than a script, selecting better images or sounds etc, paid for and transacted via the net) could really make a big difference to global business and employment. Also being used in as a field deployment for charities or aid workers who could then keep in touch with their back office, co-workers & families?

Like I said, there's a lot of positives and potential for these little black boxes, we'll just have to wait till Tuesday to see just what it can do.

"Can't wait to see what sort buzz the brand angels generate."

You don't have to wait, there's plenty of buzz being generated right now, all of it in the "where's my fscking box you thieving bastards" vein.

It's marketing fail 2.0. Get a load of gobby internet types to sign up to push your product and then give them the shaft. Presumably, somebody there is an evangelistic believer in the old saw that any publicity is good publicity.

DEar MAdam,m,

I am writing to you from the glory of God, and all his miniions, to announce that you, dear reader, have been selected to help us in our hour of need - please just send $249.99 as a starting deposit, and we will be fine, and God will look down on you and be pleased.

Please THIS IS A MATTER OF LIFE orDEATH!!!¬!""!!¬"!"1 - I can guarantee you, guaranteed by the FBI itself (www.fbi.con) that you WILL GET YOUR HARDWARE in heaven.

Please forward your banking details on to myself, and God himself will deliver the machine to you

All glory to you, please send me your money.

Mr. Cherry.

. . what happens to all the units sold when cherrypal goes bust ??? if the end user cant manage upgrades and installs then doesnt that effectively render the unit practically useless ??

If you can no longer connect to "The Cloud" then how much use is the box ??

Doorstop maybe ???

its these questions that have prevented me from parting with $$$$ as initially i was going to buy one.

Anyone comment on this ???

AndyG

According to the 'angels' blog;

"...It only came with a cord to plug it into the wall. I'll also need a phone connection, as there is a port for a phone jack..."

Now, forgive me for carping, but that's an ethernet socket.

Then she powers it up, gets a Username challenge and

"...thought that this related to the monitor as it has been around for about 7 years and originally belonged to an HP sys admin who may have swiped it before selling it to me..."

and best of all, she goes and buys a WIRELESS keyboard and mouse (for a cloud LINUX box with, presumably, no internet connection owing to the slight phone/network confusion)

"...and my 2 colleagues and I are working to get the keyboard, mouse and CherryPal all communicating..."

And she gets a Cherry before everyone else?

This could run and run ; )

Paris, for obvious reasons.

For the lazy types, they sell a slick fanless mini-ITX-based machine that doesn't need no cloud... less ex-pensive, too. The aluminum case alone is sooo... excuse me, I need to get a room.

Of course the real geeks already have a couple of self-made similar things...

I got mine too. No noice, I love it. Epiphany browser works better than firefox. Overall good value for the price. I am a 3rd grade teacher and we here will place a volume order early next year. If Cherrypal improves their communication we have a winner here. But hey, its not easy to grow up, ask my students :)

Some units appear to have been shipped:

http://greentechgirl.com/tag/cherrypal/

This 'Angel' seems massively more clued-up than the previous one (but still tried to use a wireless mouse).

Summary from her blog:

OS is Xubuntu derivative

Wi-fi works OOB

No sign of 'cloud' features

Firefox is sloooooooow

Synaptic Package Manager is installed and working

gdm.conf appears to have got hosed while adding a user from the GUI, requiring a filesystem mount from a flash drive and a rebuild of passwd, group, and shadow files. Try talking your granny through that one over the phone ; )

So they do seem to exist, but perhaps not quite ready for prime time?