TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington certainly thinks so. At a time when Apple is claimed to be producing a Mac Tablet (that no doubt will not be cheap) and Dell are about to launch its US$2,500 Latitude XT, Arrington wants to develop an ‘everyman’s’version that is capable of surfing the web and will only cost a “couple of hundred”dollars to buy.

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Arrington sees it as a simple device that would have half a gig of RAM and a 4GB hard drive, it would run on Firefox over Wi-Fi. He has already started working with a supply chain company to help build the machine and is looking for volunteers to help write the code. When the prototype has been developed, he is more than happy to open source the software and design, allowing anybody to build one of the units.

While it probably won’t have all the features and applications of similar, high-end devices, that is not Arrington’s intention – he just wants a simple device to surf the web without having to fork out a couple of thousand dollars.

Is Arrington just a socialist geek out of Silicon Valley, or a techie with a benevolent heart? Possibly a bit of both, but the results will speak for themselves.