Oh, Fusion Garage… Lately it seems the only good news which surfaces about your JooJoo tablet is the result of someone who doesn’t work for you doing something awesome with it — like installing Windows 7 on it.

Developer Matthews Garrett recently got the chance to spend some time with the JooJoo, and apart from his concerns about hardware oversights (which include a display which is connected upside-down, poor ACPI implementation, and generally shoddy coding) he’s got some serious concerns about their decision to not release source code.

The JooJoo runs a modified Ubuntu OS, after all, so they should be making the source available in order to play nice with Canonical’s licensing requirements. Garrett decided to email Fusion Garage about the GPL issue and was told to be patient, as Fusion Garage were “still actively making changes to the joojoo software [and] will make the source release available once we feel we are ready to do so.”

I’m not sure patience plays a role here, Fusion Garage, but non-compliance certainly does. Using code like Ubuntu to power a device which you’re already selling and shipping without releasing source? That’s dirty pool. I’m also not sure the argument about “actively making changes” is a logical defense — what decent hardware maker isn’t continuously looking at ways to make the firmware or software on their devices perform better?

Really, though, Fusion Garage’s nonchalance is probably to be expected from a company who, as Garrett puts it, builds a device which is “held together by a string and following wind.”

via Slashgear

Remember a few days ago when hackers installed Windows 7 on a JooJoo 12 inch tablet? Now it looks like you can do the same thing with OS X.

That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. The JooJoo tablet basically has the same specs as a netbook, including an Intel Atom processor and NVIDIA ION graphics. And we’ve seen plenty of netbooks running Windows 7, OS X, and other operating systems. But since the JooJoo tablet ships with a particularly stripped down version of Linux which is designed to offer you a web browser and little else, you could make the case that installing an alternate operating system makes the tablet a heck of a lot more useful.

OS X may be a particularly good fit if you were hoping that Apple’s magical tablet was going to run the full desktop operating system instead of the same OS used by the iPhone and iPod touch.

The member of the JooJoo Forum that installed OS X says that the touch panel drivers still need some work and the installation process was “quite the pain,” but something tells me this is just the first of many JooJoo OS X hacks we’ll see. Or given the low sales numbers, maybe just the first of few.

via Cult of Mac

The JooJoo tablet started as an ambitious project called the CrunchPad. The idea was to provide a tablet that was basically nothing but an interface for a web browser, allowing you to sit on the couch and surf, getting online in a matter of seconds. The finished product is pretty much just that — but it’s a bit underwhelming, unresponsive, and for about the same price as an iPad, you get a heck of a lot less… sort of.

Thing is, the JooJoo hardware is actually capable of much more. It’s just that the custom software interface doesn’t support third party native apps. But members of the JooJoo Forums have discovered that it’s not all that tough to install Windows 7 and turn the JooJoo into a much more versatile tablet.

While the accelerometer and 3G modem aren’t currently supported, hackers have gotten the touchscreen to play nicely with Windows 7, which means you can use an on-screen keyboard to enter text, use any web browser you like, and play 720p HD video using the media player of your choice.

The JooJoo has a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, NVIDIA ION graphics, 1GB of RAM, and a 4GB solid state disk.

You can check out a video of the tablet running Windows 7 after the break. It seems a heck of a lot more versatile than the JooJoo running the default custom Linux interface.

via Engadget

Read the rest of this entry »

Just because they might only have sold 60-some units and they’re struggling to break free of the iPad’s monolithic shadow doesn’t mean Fusion Garage is ready to give up on the JooJoo just yet. The 12″ tablet recently went on sale in Europe and they’ve now announced some upcoming changes which they hope will offer some additional appeal.

For starters, they’re working on opening up the JooJoo’s USB port for mass storage devices.  I’m not sure about this addition. Tablets are primarily about enjoying content wirelessly, and I’d much rather access my files via my local WiFi network than by plugging the USB A-B cable in from my external hard drive. In a pinch, though, this would at least be a handy way to grab a few documents or pics from a buddy’s flash drive.

The bigger news is the announcement of a 3G JooJoo tablet which Fusion garage states will be ready by July. I wouldn’t hold my breath, given their previous track record. CEO Chandra Rathakrishna has also hinted that he’s not opposed to modifying the Linux core to allow external USB 3G adapters to be used.

via Engadget

The JooJoo tablet is now available for purchase in Europe, where you can pick one up for €359 plus €15 for shipping. That’s actually not a bad deal, as it comes to a few bucks less than the $499 plus shipping you’d have to pay to get the tablet in the US or Canada.

But while the price for this 12 inch web tablet might be halfway decent, there’s still a pretty good chance you don’t want one. Earlier reviewers were left horribly unimpressed. And there seems to be evidence that as few as 64 tablets have been sold to date — which kind of makes you wonder whether the company will still be around in the years (or months) to come and whether there will be any support for this product.

The JooJoo features a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, NVIDIA ION graphics, and a custom Linux operating system that basically offers a web browser an on-screen keyboard and nothing else.

The tablet started out as the CrunchPad, a partnership between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. His idea was to build a $200 tablet for surfing the web. That never quite happened.

Update: According to the Fusion Garage blog, we can also expect to see a software update soon which should address some of the issues in early version. Among other things, it should add support for full screen HD video playback.

via Blogeee

When TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington first came up with the idea for the CrunchPad tablet, here’s what he wanted: A cheap touchscreen tablet that was pretty much just a screen and web browser. He partnered with the folks at Fusion Garage who started to build it and design custom software to make the web browser usable. And then after a huge falling out, Fusion Garage renamed the product and brought it to market as the JooJoo. And it appears they may have taken the whole nothing-but-a-browser thing way too literally.

Engadget has posted a detailed review of the tablet. And while the 12 inch tablet is attractively minimalist and has a nice big 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, the software seems to be a little too minimalist.

For instance, the home screen features shortcuts for a bunch of web sites. Click on any to launch the browser. But there’s no button for just… the browser. In order to enter a URL, you first need to pull up say, CNN, and then enter a new URL in the location bar. In order to do that, you need to pull up the on-screen keyboard, which Engadget says is usable, but not great. And oh yeah, if you press the comma key, you get a quotation mark instead. Nice.

There’s no media player and no picture viewer. If you want to listen to music or watch movies, you’ll need to fire up a web site that lets you do those things. And while there’s a webcam for video chats, Engadget couldn’t find a web based video chat site that would work with the camera.

What’s more, Fusion Garage threw in NVIDIA ION graphics so that you could watch HD Flash video on the tablet — but the version of Adobe Flash Player that the JooJoo ships with doesn’t support hardware acceleration, which means you’re still pretty much stuck with standard definition Flash video.

It sounds like most of the issues Engadget had with the tablet were software issues. Sure, from a hardware standpoint, the tablet’s a bit big and heavy to hold in one hand, and the viewing angles aren’t great. But for a $499 tablet, those issues don’t sound too bad. The software, on the other hand, sounds like it wasn’t very well thought out.

Of course, there may be an easy fix for that — install your own software. The biggest thing setting the JooJoo tablet apart from the iPad is that the JooJoo has an x86-based processor and a USB port. It’s not entirely clear at the moment whether you can plug in a USB flash drive and use it to boot an alternate OS. But if you can, the JooJoo sounds like it could easily get a second wind with an alternate operating system such as Google Chrome, Android, or Ubuntu Linux. Or how about a touch-friendly version of Jolicloud?

The iPad isn’t the only tablet shipping this week. And it’s not the only tablet that got ripped apart moments after it was released either. The handful of customers who pre-ordered the 12 inch JooJoo tablet instead of the similarly priced Apple iPad are starting to receive their orders. And Engadget has a photoset from one user that decided to dissect the JooJoo and see what’s under the hood.

Sure, the FCC pretty much went through the trouble for us recently. But the FCC doesn’t tell you how to disassemble the tablet.

Unlike the iPad, which you need to pry apart with a special tool to open up, the Fusion Garage JooJoo tablet can be opened by removing 10 screws. While the iPad’s CPU and RAM are on a single chip, you can upgrade the JooJoo’s RAM yourself. And there’s an extra mini PCI-E slot, which could make this tablet a much better option for hackers and tinkerers.

Out of the box, the JooJoo is basically a touchscreen device built around a web browser. But thanks to the Intel Atom processor and NVIDIA ION graphics, there’s also no reason you couldn’t load this computer up with Linux, Windows, or another operating system.

It’s been a long strange trip, but the JooJoo tablet is apparently now shipping. The folks at Engadget got their hands on one of the first units, and while a full review is still a few days off, Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky has posted some unboxing photos and a brief video overview of the user interface.

It’s possible that fewer than 100 JooJoo tablets are actually out there at the moment. Gizmodo dug up some documents in the ongoing lawsuit between TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington and Fusion Garage, the company responsible for the tablet. And it looks like only 90 tablets were pre-ordered. That’s pretty shocking for a device that has gotten as much attention in the tech blogosphere as the JooJoo.

Sure, at $499, the JooJoo tablet basically surfs the web — and that’s it, while for the same amount of money you can pick up an iPad with access to more than 150,000 third party apps. But the JooJoo tablet has a larger, higher resolution display and NVIDIA ION graphics for handling HD Flash video playback — although Engadget says at the moment HD Flash doesn’t look very smooth. It’s possible that this will change when the next version of the Adobe Flash Player is released.

The user interface looks pretty decent, with a series of shortcuts on the home screen for accessing web sites — although Engadget hasn’t figured out if there’s a way to customize those bookmarks yet. The on-screen keyboard is described as decent, and the browser can easily handle multiple tabs which you can flip through by scrolling left or right.

You can check out Engadget’s hands-on video after the break, or hit up Engadget for the unboxing photos. And you can read more about the tablet at thejoojoo.com.

Read the rest of this entry »