Its hard to believe it will sell for <$200 / without being locked to some sort of contract or homepage with ads etc ... If so - this is truly an amazing achievement, not to mention its amazing that its techcrunch.
It's a technique used by Dell and other PC makers for years. It's a nuisance, but if cost is a factor, it can be worth the 20 minutes it takes to clean the crap off.
Dell are bought by "The general public", who often don't know how to clean the crap off. So some of it sticks, and they make money.
The crunchpad however, is going to be bought by techie geeks. If it comes loaded with adverts, everyone will just remove them, and they won't make any money.
This is a technically amazing achievement, but IMHO the market does not exist. They'll sell a few, but nothing major.
That's a measurable though. If Crunchpad was paid to have something on it, then they measured that no one actually left it on there, they would probably stop paying pretty quickly.
