It’s finally happened. The JooJoo gets an Engadget review and there’s really not much to say; because the JooJoo doesn’t do much. It’s a big browsing pad with very few alternative usage models or software. 1.2KG is, as expected, way too heavy for a single hand usage (pretty dumb when you consider that you’re going to need one hand to use the one screen keyboard) and again, as expected, has a complete roadblock/showstopper of a battery life. 2.5hrs
Trust me, when, after 15 minutes use, you start to see 1hr-something on the battery meter, it’s a horrible feeling.
Using a (old) netbook platform was never the best design decision because it’s just not small/powerful/light/efficient enough. The Intel Menlow platform would have been better.
Engadget wraps up with this:
There are just so many things we wish Fusion Garage did differently with the JooJoo. Even putting aside the fact that Apple’s $499 iPad brings more to the table than just web browsing, the JooJoo is less portable, has a worse (if larger) screen, is unintuitive to use, and ships with half-baked software. We commend the start-up on its nice piece of hardware design, but until the software is given some much-needed love and the price is seriously reevaluated we simply cannot recommend this tablet.
I’ll wrap up with this:
If you want to mess around with a tablet for web browsing, look at the Archos 7 Home Tablet that is due to launch very soon. It’s cheap (under $200) , runs a version of Android and does a lot more than the JooJoo. It won’t be as ‘big’ and fast as a JooJoo but it will allow you to check out some casual (and mobile) tablet action without having to commit to a $500, 1.2KG table-top device. Other alternatives can be found here:
Apart from maybe the iPad, I don’t see any of these new and upcoming tablets succeeding in the marketplace. Why? It boils down to form factor and battery life. 1.2 kg (almost 3 lb!) is friggin’ heavy — the thought of it alone makes me not want to pick it up, much less bring it along with me wherever I go and using it for a prolonged period of time. For me personally, the practical weight threshold for a tablet is 1 lb (~454 g). Even the iPad is a bit heavy, but hey it’s Apple, they can get away with certain things. And if an instant-on tablet is to be carried along with you, it’s gotta last through one full work day (at least 8 hours). THe JooJoo and others like it fail both the form factor and battery life tests. Bottom line: if a ubiquitous computing device, which I see the next-gen tablets aspiring to be, is heavier than a pound and lasts less than 8 hours, it’s going to fail. The best they can hope for is to be relegated to a niche market.
The real question is, can it be booted from usb? That depends on the bios- There are pics around the net of vista running on the JooJoo. If Fusion garage have this functionality built into the bios they are on a win with this in the core pc community
I dont think the 1.2kg weight is an issue, seriously manup
“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.”
The joojoos Atom processor runs at 1.6ghz AND also comes with a Nvidia Ion chip to run HD@720dpi upscaled to 1366*768 (one of the few tablets that do this for $500)
An upgrade from the tiny 4gb ssd to a 32 gb ssd should be around $100. I see great potential for the JooJoo in the pc community that for its price really packs a hardware punch.
good morning, awesome blog.