Posts Tagged ‘Fusion Garage’

The iPad isn’t the first device out there that claims to be magical.  The JooJoo’s name is actually derived from the African word for Magical Device, and JooJoo’s creator Fusion Garage claims that the device was designed to bring users into a magical world where ‘everything on the Internet is just a single touch away.’

A few tech sites released reviews of the JooJoo this week, and, well, they’re weren’t very magical at all.

Wired called the device ‘a real piece of doodoo,’ and rewarded it with 3/10 stars.  While Wired praised the JooJoo’s design, HD screen and Flash support, they hammered the device’s buggy interface, poor battery life and lack of apps.  Wired’s most telling comment?  ‘You’re going to charge $500 for this thing with a straight face?’

PC Mag called the JooJoo’s general operation a ‘mass frustration.’  Their complaints centered around the JooJoo’s operating system, which was unresponsive, buggy and crash-prone.  PC Mag gave the JooJoo just 1 1/2 out of 5 stars, and suggests that users get an iPad or wait for the Microsoft Courier or HP Slate rather than dropping $500 on the JooJoo.

Engadget loved the JooJoo’s hardware, although they commented that at 12.8 x 7.8 inches the JooJoo is not really a ‘handheld.’  Unlike other reviewers, Engadget did not have any problems with the responsiveness of the JooJoo’s display.  However, Engadget did voice a number of gripes with the JooJoo’s operating system, including poor navigation, poor Flash performance, and general bugginess.

To be fair, we haven’t tested a JooJoo, so we can’t verify any of these reviews first hand.  However, the prevailing opinion of the JooJoo seems to be quite negative, if not downright hostile.

One of the problems here is that the JooJoo, when it was known as the Crunch Pad, was originally marketed as a $200 tablet.  And, at $200 I think the JooJoo would be a great device.

However, after several delays, reviewers received the JooJoo just a day or so before the launch of the Apple iPad.  With both devices selling for about $500, the JooJoo never had a chance.

According to PC Mag, Fusion Garage claims that they will fix many of the JooJoo’s bugs in an upcoming software update.  We hope that Fusion Garage follows through with this, however, it may be too little too late.

The highly anticipated JooJoo tablet hit the FCC today, complete with internal photo goodness.  Although the internal FCC pics aren’t great, they do give us a look under the JooJoo’s hood, revealing how this tablet was put together.  More pics after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Not feeling the JooJoo tablet’s Linux-based OS?  Well you may be in luck.  Test setup photos for the JooJoo tablet show the device running Windows Vista, above.  That’s not a huge stretch, since the device relies on an Intel Atom N270 processor and Nvidia Ion GPU.

Although driver support may be an issue at first, we’d expect that it won’t be long before the JooJoo pad is hacked to run your favorite version of Windows.  We do wonder however, how useful Windows will be on the JooJoo given the device’s small 4 GB SSD.

Update:  Silly us – the pic above shows the JooJoo running Windows Vista, not Windows 7.

After a bitter battle with Michael Arrington and months of hype, the JooJoo tablet passed through the FCC today, signaling that the device will likely meet its already delayed March 25 release date.  FCC documents for the JooJoo tablet were filed by Realtek Semiconductor Corp., whose RTL8191SE miniCard will power the JooJoo’s 802.11 b/g/n WiFi.

The User Manual for the JooJoo tablet reveals that the device will rely on an Intel Atom N270 processor and an Nvidia Ion GPU.  While it’s a bit unfortunate that Fusion Garage didn’t decide to use the power-sipping Intel Atom N450, the addition of the Nvidia Ion will provide a big boost to the JooJoo’s HD video playback capabilities with only a limited impact on battery life.

It’s also interesting to note that the JooJoo tablet has a SIM card slot (below) on its side, and an internal 3G antenna.   This confirms that, contrary to initial reports, 3G will definitely be an option on the JooJoo.

Earlier this month, Fusion Garage announced that the release date of the JooJoo tablet was pushed back to March 25 due to a “manufacturing error.”  While this announcement caused some concern among Fusion Garage’s pre-order customers, today’s FCC filing gives a good indication that Fusion Garage will meet the March 25th release date.