Over the last few years since I bought my netbooks, I have 2 I have not been very excited about any new hardware. This was the one exception I was hoping would pan out. But as one review said “the JooJoo is doodoo” To bad but it seems all new hardware is overpriced and underwhelming. I would give Ubuntu Lucid Lynx a good look as it is a far better OS than windows 7 in my opinion or os x for that matter. If a CHEAP, I mean $200 tablet came out I might be interested if it is compatible or running a good Linux version. Why put a resource hog like windows 7 on it which would cost another $100 if you want to be legal?

From previous articles, I knew the JooJoo was based on an Atom, but I hadn't realized it essentially was a PC (this means it essentially has a PC compatible BIOS (otherwise they'd need something like BootCamp for Apple machines) and mostly uses PC hardware that Windows knows about).

This leads to a number of thoughts:

1. CrunchPad hardware was a failure: it seems unlikely they would have started with building PC class hardware, that would be rather expensive and unnecessary for their intentions. They probably would have been better off contracting with say Archos or perhaps some Taiwanese or Chinese company to build the hardware to their specifications and simply concentrated on the software.

2. FusionGarage must be taking really small margins: large capacitive multitouchscreens are expensive, Atoms are expensive (and power hungry), and all the rest of the otherwise unnecessary PC support hardware is just added cost. For example, this probably means the built-in flash is managed by a Flash-SATA interface controller, which is hooked up to a SATA port on the PC-class core logic chip (probably an Intel 945G), as well as having a large boot ROM for the BIOS.

3. $500 is actually not too bad a price for the hardware you get–if it didn't have such terrible battery life.