Hello,
Just got a Chumby One and thought I would write a brief post about my initial findings! The 'out of the box' experience is pretty good. The unboxing and initial wow factor is great. It's up there almost on a par with Apple! Everything was nice and neatly packed into the nicely presented packaging and I am happy with the apparent build quality of the Chumby One. It feels pretty solid for what it is.

I was a bit apprehensive about purchasing a device that essentially revolves around Flash for 99% of its applications, but not afraid to hack something else onto it if necessary (MeeGo, Android, whatever - I run nas-central and contribute to OpenEmbedded so I am not afraid to hack it to bits!) but decided to give the Chumby OS a chance.

First boot takes a short while to complete with an informative video on how to use the Chumby. Should be pretty easy to use for any user that knows their wifi settings. Completed this quickly and moved on to activiating the Chumby. This was just as quick and easy and completed with a quick visit to the site.

I popped in the battery I got from amazon at this stage. It started charging. Good! Did the software update as requested by Chumby - this took 5 mins and required no interaction from me. That was easy!

Next I started playing with the widgets. This is where I got a little disappointed. First I tried the Runs House widget (not that I am a fan, I just wanted to see it playing video!) this refused to play. Perhaps its because I am in the UK, but no useful error was returned.

Next was the UK train times widget. It loads up, but refuses to return any information about my station or any other that I tried. Boo. Tried the BBC news/weather apps - hooray they work!

Time for some music. Put it next to my old analog radio alarm clock and tried to tune the radio. Unfortunately I can only pick up a few FM radio stations where my old clock can pick up tens of stations. Tried a couple of the online radio services included with the chumby and two of them didn't work.

I guess if I was looking to improve Chumby I would be looking for better quality widgets that work reliably - perhaps better vetting of apps? Also the FM radio is a useful feature, but its not very good.

In a nutshell its a nice piece of kit for a non-techie. Easy to use and well presented. Most of the apps work well but a couple have some issues, but the FM raidio is a bit crap. As a techie I will be hopefully hacking it to bits over the coming months!

Cheers