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
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.
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?
Very cool, but I don’t particularly care about Win7 on a tablet. It’s a productivity OS on a media-consumption form factor.
I’d love to see how Android/ChromeOS works on this. Also the new Ubuntu for netbooks could be quite awesome.
Liliputing should get on top of this! If these other OSes work (and work well), the JooJoo tablet may find some new legs!