Well well. We'd always suspected that the
JooJoo tablet was hiding something extra to
run HD video and Flash, and it's just hit the FCC with full documentation and a teardown confirming that there's an NVIDIA Ion GPU paired with an Atom N270 packed inside. We're also seeing a 3G card in there, although it's unclear whether it'll be active or installed at launch --
we've been told the 3G version won't be ready until sometime later this year, but things have been
changing fast, so that may be in flux as well. There's also a picture showing it running Windows, but we're assuming that's just for testing purposes -- we'd also bet it'd be an easy little hack. But back to Ion for a second: our
experience with first-gen Ion netbooks has been one of decreased performance and drastically reduced battery life, so we're very curious to see how the JooJoo holds up compared to modern netbooks running Intel's Pine Trail chips and NVIDIA's Optimus-based Ion 2. We'll see -- it's supposed to ship in just a few weeks. Two more pics after the break.
P.S.- Oh, and Fusion Garage got back to us yesterday with a list of supported local video formats, and it's pretty decent: AVI, MPEG-4, MOV, WMV and WMA, FLV (Flash Video), VOB, OGG, OGM and OGV, MKV (Mastroska), DiVX and XViD. We'll see how the battery holds up, though -- our very own Joanna Stern
predicts a best case of 3.5 hours with WiFi on and a video playback time of two hours.
posted March 11th 2010 3:07PM
Ewww. Atom N270. Stale. There goes the battery life.
They probably went with the Atom N270 to keep the price down. I am glad it has ION. :) This is starting to look good.
@One Love i agree. this thing sucks far less than i originally thought.
@kojo87
With ION under the hood development for this will be interesting. Maybe some good touch games (ipadesque) will become available.
Actually the more I see about this thing, the more sweet it looks. I first thought it was going to be a pos, but it's really starting to look bad ass.
I think I'll wait for one with ChromeOS though.
@CBONE
Wow, at least it has 'Fans' .
Hey, it says "the battery is non replaceable"...no way!
@cherryboom
Yep, a real computer requires a real fan, I guess you missed that day of fingerpainting class.
@CBONE Yup, the CPU is going to be too anemic to run any good games, regardless of Ion, based on the reviews I've seen. At least with Optimus/Ion 2 the tradeoff with battery life wouldn't be an issue unless you were using Flash, but this thing is just going to eat batteries all the time to no purpose. Plus of course the only reason to include it would be to play games, and they'll probably never even get a developer's kit out the door, let alone an app store... Not seeing it. Yes it'll play Flash HD though, which wouldn't otherwise be possible. But the tradeoff will be its going to be too expensive, it'll be too heavy, and the battery life will be very poor...
@One Love I agree, I thought they will pick for nvidia's smartchip for this one but that'll be a bit costy. Hopefully, this one can stand out from the pile of tablets sprouting today. Ideas: http://is.gd/9YA1L
Do want! I still prefer the name Crunchpad too bad they couldnt keep it. Hopefully it will have ion2.
@MoonWalkerCTE Yep, we are not faced with a battle of the tablets, but with a battle of the lame tablet names: iPad vs. JooJoo.
@MoonWalkerCTE Its an Atom N270, so the Ion works with it, unlike Pine Trail. Ion is actually faster than Ion 2 though, so you probably don't want Ion 2 anyway... I don't think you're going to see Ion 2 release for the older Atom generation...
@JeanMichel Decombe
Lame?
"Juju or Ju-Ju is a word of West African origin, derived from the French joujou (toy) [1], that refers to the supernatural power ascribed to an object; or fetish." (from wikipedia)
if that was the inspiration for name, I say not lame at all; creative, even. I'd prefer the Juju spelling, but that may have some actual significance, too.
I want it if I can have windows 7 on it.
@werty1432k Shouldn't be too hard to cram Windows 7 on it. It uses the same old guts as a ton of old tablets and netbooks.
@CBONE Which is like the only reason I would want one I think. I wanted an iPad (before I knew exactly what it was and what Apple did with it) but then of course it runs like a big iPod touch. Looking for something more full featured, a hacked JooJoo running Win7 could be awesome!
@werty1432k
If this thing can run Win7, I'm not exactly sure what the company is thinking. Do they really think this will sell better as a one function internet browsing device than a full featured OS? That's a pretty big gamble for a no-namer in the tech industry.
@Delta Yeah totally agree!
@werty1432k I want XP on it
@Sarcasme Yeah it would probably run better? Not sure but either way, friggan better than having a multi touch giant tablet that can pretty well only run an internet browser.. XP or 7, either way :)
@Delta
They are thinking that shipping it with Windows 7 would cost a ton of money and kill sales because they would have to pass the cost to buyers. Fortunately for me, I have several copies of premium waiting for a home.
@CBONE
Yep, Windows would add a lot to the cost...you can get it and just put windows on it yourself.
I like the larger size over the iPad since one use I have planned for it is showing a photography portfolio in certain situations.
@werty1432k Its kind of a weird product given the parts they're using. Its capable of running Windows 7, but you might/might not be able to make that work without a soldering iron. For all we know they used some touch screen chip that doesn't have a Windows driver. But given that they've gone with Atom etc why not offer Windows 7 on it? Agreed it will cost more, quite a bit more even, but if they're not going to do that why did they go with Atom in the first place? You could have done the internet tablet thing with Tegra or something and it would have cost less and used less power and been lighter and ...
@Fanfoot I think it would be one of the best win7 tablets out there. If it is easy to hack win7 on then it could be an awesome all around device.
@werty1432k Dual boot into w7 would be sweet. Not sure if I would want that as the default choice though, I'd rather see how finger friendly joojoo is with its own apps first.
I think anything that really NEEDS windows (excel, photoshop etc) is really going to need a keyboard and mouse to get any REAL work done.
Still, w7 option would give me the choice of freedom... and I like freedom :)
I must say that the hardware design matches the iPad. I just hope that the user experience will be smooth enough for people to actually buy this product.
@Rajivsri
Design... yes. It's a tablet. Size... the JooJoo is freakin' huge!
As for people buying it... the JooJoo will have to be in stores for people to see it and get their hands on it. But, Apple gets plenty of foot traffic in Apple Stores and in Best Buy as it is. And... TV commercials.
Side by side... the JooJoo is bigger... is that a better value overall? But if you can get an iPad for $499 too... the JooJoo is gonna be a tough sell. I can't wait to hear the sales pitch to make the *average* person choose the JooJoo over the iPad.
@Michael Scrip
Simple enough, fire up Safari and show them all the websites you can't use, so that Apple can keep charging for otherwise free flash games.
@jon Hell just go to the regular version of youtube plus go to hulu, myspace, daily motion, and any number of local tv news sites.
@jon So you planning to walk around with yours at Best Buy doing this for people? Cuz there ain't gonna be a JooJoo salesman working there. And they ain't gonna buy any airtime on TV. So most people won't even know the thing exists. It might not even be sold at Best Buy, who knows? And of couse since the company is one you've never heard of you'll distrust the warranty, won't know if you'll ever see updates. There won't be an app store, nor any games, nor a bookstore, nor any way to buy music or video on it. Yes, you'll be able to watch Flash video, but that's not the only thing in the world you know...
@Fanfoot
Wow, is it just me or is Apple's App culture actually making people stupid?
"There won't be an app store, nor any games, nor a bookstore, nor any way to buy music or video on it."
I'll do the same thing I've always done. Go to amazon and download music or videos, download books from any of the online e-book stores.
I can play all the same games, but since they're flash I don't have to pay for them.
I don't need an App store, I can use the whole web. not the sterilized garden Lord Jobs allows.
I doubt I'll buy this, it doesn't really have the power I'm looking for. But If I did it would probably end up running Windows 7.
@jon Why would you even call him Lord? He ain't even the **** of ****.(put whatever you want there...)
@Atkins
I guess you answered my first question.
"And save them on the 4GB internal storage?"
As opposed to the whopping 16GB i'd get with an iPad.
Let's see, I could use the USB port to save to a thumb drive, or an external HDD, I could get real wild and upgrade the SSD to 64GB and still pay less than the 64GB iPad costs.
Or I could just use the actual browser at Hulu or Crackle, or Netflix even.
"Apps are useful to have you know."
No, they're not. Apps are what you get when you're not allowed to use real programs.
Show me one App who's functionality I can't get with a web app, or linux, or windows program, often times for free.
"Good luck with the mouse over on a touchscreen."
Plenty of flash games work just fine with a touchscreen.
For those that don't, again, this thing has USB I could use a mouse, or KB, or anything else I can find the drivers for.
@Atkins
"...but this thing is way more limited."
No, it's not. If you truly cannot grasp that, you are the perfect Apple customer.
Some people like options, some people like being told what to do.
You're obviously the latter.
@Atkins
Why would I bother, you've ignored or misunderstood every point I've made.
It's like talking to a dog.
I can't imagine this having the greatest battery life. I'm surprised it's not ARM based
@Luffy Can't get full-tilt Flash right now today with ARM.
wooo
"There's also a picture showing it running Windows 7." It looks more like Vista to me.
@jimlivingston
Vista: Ultimate upside-down edition.
@LAY
your right that is vista... weird.
Wow.
So this is really a go this time?
I also think it needs win7.
Where's the picture of it running windows 7? I only see vista running.
With those innards, a hackintosh sounds like it should be on the menu, making it exactly what I wanted the iPad to be. Gadget lust is now official.
@jakjak9210 Hackintosh on this device sounds like a very messy afair. And thats from somebody who has built two Hackintosh PCs and put it on two completely different notebooks.
This 'JooJoo's' looking better every day!
Why would one want this? I mean come on, if you're going to use Windows + Atom anyway, just get a netbook. That battery life is fairly sad too, for something that supposed to be highly mobile device.
Atom? Ion? 3G? Yes. Yes. Yes.
If it had a laptop battery life, I could care less if it was running Windows 7 and actually worked alright. If I get a smartphone, I think it'd be pointless to get an ARM tablet running Android. I'd want a Win7 device.
The impressive video format support already makes it better for media than the iTampon...