Fusion Garage has finally
come clean with its side of the story in regards to the
CrunchPad debacle, and just unveiled its new Arrington-free version of the device: the Joojoo. The way Fusion Garage tells it, the device was already in the works at the time of the original TechCrunch post about the idea, and that Michael Arrington and co. made zero contributions to the development of the device -- and apparently don't have any sort of contract to prove otherwise. The device is much along the lines of what we'd been hearing: it runs a UNIX-based OS, boots straight to a web browser (otherwise no apps at all), weighs about 2.4 pounds and features a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen. There are no physical buttons on the slate outside of the on-off switch, which taps into a 9 second boot time. Under the hood there's a 4GB SSD, WiFi (no 3G), an accelerometer and about 5 hours of battery life. Pre-orders start on December 11th, with a dream-shattering $499 pricetag bringing this thing back into the realm of reality. We're supposed to see demos of the Joojoo in the wild this week, and another shot of the device can be found after the break.
posted December 7th 2009 12:50PM
JooJoo? Is that some kind of racist comment relating to the fact the idea behind this was stolen?
@airmikee
JooJoo means magic. This device is magical. Like a digital unicorn. A $500 unicorn.
@airmikee It sounds like you're the one trying twist the name to mean something like that.
Sounds like "juju."
@shockr Sounds like Jew Jew.
@shockr
i was thinking jubejubes like the candy.
@shockr
I was thinking sound like Doo Doo with a price like that.
@Banksta3 I'm all for African names to make things sound kitschy . . . . but when they are homophones for words which, when used as product names, might offend some people . . . I dunno.
Also, this dude's from India. Does he think it will sell really well in neighboring Muslim countries with a name like Je-errr-Joo Joo?
Jewish people should be offended for obvious reasons
Muslims won't like it, they'll probably call it the "Zionist Tablet"
White Supremacists won't like it because, you know, they hate Jews
Black people should be offended because a dude from India used their African heritage to hock a commercial product. At least Ubuntu doesn't try to make a buck off it!
Politically correct people won't like it because saying the name makes them worry about offending people.
@Ryan Trevisol
Joo Joo according to the Urban Dictionary means Karma or Vibes
e.g.
'Oh no, that's some baaaaad Joo Joo, I wouldn't go there'
'Oh He has good Joo Joo. He won the Lottery!'
@vlad the inhaler So from crunchpad and now JooJoo is this the new pseudoname of Mr. Arrington of TC? lol, It's not overpriced hardware, considering that a netbook isn't much cheaper (at least one with ION runs you about $399 + tax at HP). If you took the same hardware and slapped on an Apple OS with fit and polish, people would be clamoring for the device like zombies. Another JooJoo POV: http://bit.ly/joojoo-who-tablet
$499 for a mobile web browser? Ohhh, man, good luck with that one.
Actually, I take that back. I hope this fails miserably.
@jonac13 Same here, and I agree. This is ALMOST like that time God sent a flood because humans sucked hard.
@jonac13 set sail for fail indeed
@jonac13 Does a stand alone browser device remind anyone of those stand alone MailStations for e-mail?
http://cgi.ebay.com/MIVO-STANDARD-200-MAILSTATION_W0QQitemZ280430352979QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item414af39a53
Out of billions of possible names I think they could have come up with something better.
@werty1432k bad joo joo mon
@werty1432k should've called it "The Arrington", just to piss the cocky bastard off....
@werty1432k: yeah, but then again, many of us were shaking our heads about the "Wii" at one point... :)
@werty1432k And I think I'll be waiting for the supposed Apple tablet or at least wait to see how that all turns out. Not like the JooJoo would be coming to Canada any time soon anyway.
so it's a commercial chromium OS?
Yeah, with a name like that I can see this selling really well in the lucrative $500 tablets for 5 year olds niche.
so, i can get a awesome full featured netbook for 500 or i can get a screen that only browses the web? Honestly what on earth were they thinking when the made this, especially if this was a stolen idea? lol
@dsr1205
Yep, the Asus 1201N makes this look like a chump.
@dsr1205
Arrington WANTED to sell it for $200-300. Like that was going to happen anyway lol.
joojoo means "Yeah right" in Finnish... Suck on that :D
$500??!?!??!?!?
aaaaaaaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
@sweet greggo Welcome to reality.
@sweet greggo
Hehe, my reaction exactly.
@sweet greggo
I think this interrobang will be of great use to you.
"‽"
@sweet greggo
+1, maybe $350 to $400
Out of CrunchPad's ashes, and into its own...
@EGOvoruhk
Agreed!
What on earth is "hoohoo"? :p
Consider me sold... on the Acer 1820 convertible
All I can say is BAD JooJoo!
Hopefully google will buy them and give these away for next x-mas with google OS and locked into their search/adds....
...seems a fair trade to me.
no storage, no keyboard, (probably) no video card and STILL 2.4 pounds???
@slamEVIL
my bad, i didn't catch the 4gb ssd. still a bit heavy if you ask me.
@slamEVIL In the first pic I see what's likely a cover for an SD card slot, so there's some expansion possibilities there, hopefully... But it's still way overpriced...
Poorly written website. Does not fit on my netbook.
Usually I would not worry too much about that from a new website AND a new company, but when you are one targeting, really, the netbook market, I would think it would be foremost in their mind...
So it's "browser based" and they never showed the browser, just a menu with a bunch of icons?
@john a.k.a. the browser.
My interest in this stems only from seeing Mike Arrington whine and complain like little bitch.
@(Unverified) I've been waiting for him to fail ever since he insulted Leo Laporte.
"SCREW YOU MIKE!!!"
id probably get it if the cpu/gpu are any good and if the software isnt laggy.
Will Crunch Gear get a review unit? Hehe
I like the concept, but they are about a year too late, unless the battery and screen technology is so awesome that it could be used as a full color Kindle that you just need to charge once a day.
@EricS SCREW YOU!
for 500 bucks I'd rather just get a nice netbook or ultraportable that has a full operating system.
I'm pretty sure it runs Linux, not Unix.
Linux is not Unix, nor is it "Unix-based." It was originally a clean room copy of Unix-ish ideas, and could be called "Unix-like," but it's not based on, or derived from actual Unix.
So disappointed, no 3g and 5 hr battery life is a joke for a slate tablet.