CrunchPad, JooJoo, Whatever

By  |  Monday, December 7, 2009 at 1:52 pm

I like writing about gizmos a lot more than soap operas, so when the dream that was the CrunchPad crumbled into a spat between former partners, I sort of lost interest. For the record, Fusion Garage, which decided to pursue the Web-tablet project without TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, announced its plans today. The CrunchPad is now the JooJoo. It’s $499 rather than $300. And the company will be taking preorders at TheJooJoo.com starting on Friday. That’s assuming that Arrington’s “imminent” legal action doesn’t put a crimp in the release schedule.

If you had high hopes for the CrunchPad, what we’re witnessing is the equivalent of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak squabbling on the eve of the Apple II’s release, and Woz firing Jobs. Or something like that. Anyhow, it’s kind of embarrassing. Bad JooJoo, you might say.

Fusion Garage unveiled the JooJoo this morning in a Webcast which I missed–but which was apparently made up of equal parts product demo and sniping at Arrington. The device has a 12.1″ touchscreen and Wi-Fi (but no 3G). I wish the company well. But what do you think the chances are that the JooJoo will be remembered as anything other than “that gadget was going to be the CrunchPad, and which never amounted to anything?”

 
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1 Comments For This Post

  1. alex g Says:

    Why would I get this instead of a netbook running a full os? Any reason at all?

2 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. General Projects Blog » Blog Archive » TeuxDeux, Etc Says:

    […] worth mentioning how little flack Fusion Garage is getting for their actions in relaunching the CrunchPad as JooJoo just days after […]

  2. The JooJoo Cometh Says:

    […] See all: News Over at VentureBeat, Paul Boutin has an update on what is now the second-most interesting tablet device announced to date: Fusion Garage’s JooJoo, the former CrunchPad that until now has been notable largely for behind-the-scenes dramatics and legal wrangling. […]