JooJoo Revives Dead Crunchpad

Through the magic of corporate law (or lack therof), the device formerly known as the Crunchpad had risen from the dead and been reborn as the JooJoo. Following Michael Arrington’s announcement last week that the device would never come to market, former joint venture partner Fusion Garage trotted out their version of the story and a working prototype at a press conference earlier this week.

JooJoo, (normally spelled juju) a West African word meaning supernatural power ascribed to an object, or fetish, or the object itself, is an apt name for the device, with it’s connotation of mirages and mystical spells. The prototype is the same surfing tablet device we’ve been hearing about all along, except now it will cost $499, instead of the $200 price point Arrington trumpeted. At this price, you might as well opt for a Netbook, instead of a touchscreen only tablet running a custom OS which only works over W-Fi.
Fusion Garage plans to start taking orders for JooJoos this week and ship the device to customers in 8 to 10 weeks. Who would buy a new device sight unseen from an unknown Singaporean company being threatened with lawsuits is an open question.

The JooJoo specs include; 12.1-inch touch screen, 4GB SSD, 802.11n Wi-Fi enabled, USB connection for keyboard, mouse or data input, Webkit browser running on Linux-based OS. Other minor details, such as amount of RAM and type of CPU have not been disclosed yet. The final version customers receive will no doubt be different in many repects from the prototype, as Fusion Garage gets feedback from early reviewers, so the lack of details is understandable, if frustrating.

Hands-on JooJoo Reviews at the Industry Standard and PC Magazine:

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/12/09/joojoo-tablet-hands
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356781,00.asp