CherryPal Cloud-Computing PC First-Impressions Suggest Mediocre

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.