Honestly, everything I've ever seen with regard to Arrington or TC has been surrounded in "drama" and hype, both things I'd rather simply avoid.

I truly don't understand the appeal, but I'm curious... Are there any hackers out there who think that TC provides any form of intriguing technical commentary? Or that he's a legitimate "visionary/evangelist" in things dot-com?

If the answer to both is "no", what's left? Why do we have so many TC stories?

  Are there any hackers out there who think that 
  TC provides any form of intriguing technical commentary?

You are making two assumptions here: 1. Hackers are only into technical commentary 2. TC promises technical commentary and under delivers

I don't think either of them are true. For a lot of us, particularly those doing startups, an article on TC about our company can be worth many times more than frontpage NYT story. I say that from experience.

Even if you dislike TC's content, dismissing its potential value to your business would be stupid.

What has been the value of being on TC for you?

I've had a number of startups get their post on TC, which resulted in tons of clicks on our homepage, and basically nothing beyond that. These startups ranged from VC funded to boot strap, and I can't really say the "publicity" we received was useful in any way.

FWIW, we got funded because of our TC coverage. Our investor (a Silicon Valley VC) called us the day of the post. 2 months later, the money was in our accounts.

Top two things:

1. We got incredible SEO out of it. As a result of TC, we got on top of digg/reddit. Each of those gave us dozens of more linkbacks. This significantly helped us with our seo strategy that got us sustained 80-90,000/uniques a day within 3 months.

2. We got into ycombinator. I believe without getting onto TC, it would be very hard to get traction. And without traction, a site like ours would be a very tough sell(as much to ourselves as to investors)

Before we launched, our 3 month plan was to get on TC. That we got on it a few days after launch put us way ahead.

The appeal of TC (for me atleast) is that they produce a lot of content. The subjective nature of the content is one aspect I won't address, but the simple fact is that they are very active reporters. Like it or not, it is often the first place I hear about up and coming startups.

I like the subjective nature - you don't have to beat around the bush to find what the editorial staff's (!) position is it's plain as your nose right there.

Yes, TechCrunch is great and has a substantial position in our vague industry. Arrington has almost single handedly resulted in a spotlight being cast onto us that simply didn't exist before. I'm not saying someone else couldn't have done it, and maybe perhaps better, but Arrington was the one to step forward to the plate and TC has done a lot more good for our industry than bad.

From the start the promise of building a large touchscreen tablet for $300 was simply impossible. Either they were naive or dishonest. The 12" LCD touch panel alone is likely $200-$300 in bulk or even more. How can you price a product at retail below the cost of an individual component? As the price crept up to $400, then $500 and probably more realistically $800-$1k I think Mr. Arrington needed an end game that didn't make him look dishonest or naive. An IP dispute solves that problem nicely. Of course he could be telling the truth but based on the pricing fib/naivety I'm skeptical.

I've seen large "touch panel" layer parts for various devices for well under $100 and 1080p 22" TN LCD screens with built in speakers for $100-$150, so a 12" touchscreen panel would likely be nowhere near $200.

In what type of volume?

Here's a 15" panel at $97 for a single order: http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/261192316-15inch-SAW...

Note that this a touch panel not the LCD, but they do work perfectly well

You're comparing apples to oranges.

I was involved in a similar project ten years ago. At the time we had no problems getting to ca. $500 with a 10.9" LCD/touch combo, obviously otherwise with very modest specs (a NS x86 clone, 32MB RAM, 16MB flash) but enough to get Opera running on a stripped down Linux with a number of other apps. Sourcing a reasonably priced touch screen was definitively not what killed that project.

I'd be very surprised if $300 would've been impossible today, even with a larger screen, though of course that depends on the rest of the specs. Especially given the specs of my new $500 laptop. Sure, it lacks a touch layer, but its also spec'ed far higher than you'd need for a pad like this.

Here's a 7" tablet for under $274 at retail: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.31523

A 12" device for $300 might be hard, but under $500 is doable for sure (even with a capacitive touchscreen).

(Edit: another version, without Android support for $211: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.27441)

That's not a capacitive screen. Apple has effectively banished all other (mobile) touch technologies - capacitive is the only one that doesn't royally suck as far as user experience goes.

A 12" capacitive touch layer... think at least $250 at volume.

I'm not sure resistive screens "royally" suck. They aren't as good as capacitive, but Nokia still uses them. Maybe only "suck"?

The pricing isn't clear. http://utouch.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-209605425/capa... has a range - I'd guess $250 might be about right.

Resistive is what was common before capacitive came along - I'm sure we've all played with them extensively at some point. Take my Garmin GPS for example, it's got a resistive screen that, coming from a daily iPhone user, just doesn't work. I have to practically stab it with a fingertip to get it to register, and even then it's pretty consistently wrong, and will often think I'm tapping the button next to it.

Argh.

The iPhone set the bar - and manufacturers have responded. I doubt you will find a single manufacturer now who is trying to peddle resistive touchscreen phones in their new products. Nokia, Moto, HTC, etc, appear to only have capacitive touchscreens on the roadmap - for good reason.

Most tablet PCs are feeling incredibly dated for the same reason - IMHO the next product to enter this field will need capacitive sensing, or die.

12" touchscreen monitor for $249 for a single piece: http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/263506741-12-Inch-To...

That'll be under $200 in bulk, and as a screen (not a complete monitor).

Based on those prices, $400 for the complete device might be possible.

Its called pre-installed software, search engines and default services. Its worth alot- Both in "revenue now" and recurring revenue.