I just got my brand new Chumby 2 days ago. Configured it and had it up on the net in about 10 minutes, no problems. After about 20 minutes of operation, it began failing to load widget content and finally informed me that it had lost the network connection. After multiple restarts of both the Chumby and the access point with no success, I set it aside. An hour later, I powered it on and it was back on the net again with no problems, only to fail again about 20 minutes later.

I spent the better part of this afternoon testing the Chumby with 2 different Apple Airport Express access points, a Macbook Pro in "network sharing" mode, and a plain vanilla Linksys WAP-11g access point. Regardless of which access point was active, the Chumby fails as soon as it heats up. For me, the touch screen becomes almost too hot to rest a finger on. After letting the device cool for about 15 minutes, it ALWAYS started up with WiFi operational and would fail within 20-30 minutes of operation.

I can say with close to 100% certainty that the problem is not with the access point(s) or any of the rest of the network infrastructure. Whether the Chumby's problem is overheating or some other problem that isn't related to cycling the power (i.e. a memory leak), I can't say. But after repeated test, allowing the device to cool down between tests, it definitely seems to be one or more components failing due to heat stress.

So now what? Is this a common problem or do I just have a defective unit?