Michael Arrington has incorporated a new company with 14 employees called Crunchpad Inc.. Arrington has said that he will be active in the company for now but eventually wants to have someone replace him so he can go back to blogging full time.

The CrunchPad is getting closer and closer to release, last we heard about the device it was 18mm thick, had a 12-inch 1024×768 display, Flash support, 1GB of RAM, and a 4GB flash drive.

We now know that it will come in different colors, have an Intel Atom processor, will be capable of connecting an external keyboard, and will actually be slightly thinner at about 16mm.

Early last month it was announced that there would be a media event officially launching the device sometime in July. But, according to recent reports the event could come as late as August. I’m a little disappointed about the delay but I’m not too surprised, we are talking about someone who hasn’t really lead a project like this before. Hardware is a completely different realm compared to what Arrington is used to.

I’m expecting the CrunchPad to be released in late August or early September, the price of the device, according to Arrington, will be “less than $300,” which may mean $299 as I predicted previously.

I’m getting a little excited about the device, the prospect of connecting an external keyboard to it will be very useful. I imagine myself bringing this thing with me on trips instead of my laptop and just keeping a keyboard in my bag in case I need to do some writing.

Also, Tech blog titan Michael Arrington’s next big thing: Hardware – San Francisco Business Times: