Fusion Garage might be looking to their second-gen tablets – expected to arrive in the first half of 2011 with Android and a custom UI – but rumors that the original JooJoo had been axed seem to have been premature. The company has announced a reseller agreement for the original tablet, which will see Japanese firm ASTEC bumping JooJoo’s storage to 16GB and then doing what’s necessary to “customize joojoo for business applications.”
Meanwhile alternative operating systems are also being explored. While the JooJoo currently runs a custom Linux OS, reselleres “are expected to utilize alternative operating systems such as Linux and Microsoft Windows.”
The current JooJoo will be removed from direct-to-consumer sale on November 19, and the next-gen line of tablets will neither use the brand name nor be backward-compatible. “We have learned a lot and will carry forward insight gained from joojoo to our new generation of products” CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan claims, though the company will continue to support the first-gen device.
FUSION GARAGE EXPANDS SALES CHANNELS FOR TOUCH-SCREEN TABLET DEVICES
Company Signs Vertical Market Reseller Agreement for joojoo with Osaka, Japan-Based ASTEC Co. Ltd.; ASTEC to Customize joojoo for Business Applications
SINGAPORE–(11/18/10)–Fusion Garage, a designer and developer of touch-screen computing devices, today announced it has expanded distribution channels via a vertical market reseller agreement with Osaka, Japan-based ASTEC Co. Ltd. Through the agreement, ASTEC will customize Fusion Garage’s first generation Internet tablet, joojoo, for corporate applications. Fusion Garage will upgrade Joojoo’s internal storage capabilities to 16 gigabytes and ASTEC will customize joojoo’s operating system for business applications. Resellers, such as ASTEC, are expected to utilize alternative operating systems such as Linux and Microsoft Windows in joojoo.
Fusion Garage is also in discussions with other resellers and systems integrators to distribute joojoo in vertical markets such as medical, transportation, logistics and others that take advantage of its 12.1 inch form factor. The growing interest from vertical market resellers is anticipated to consume the remaining Joojoo inventory by the end of this year. As a result, Joojoo will no longer be available for direct-to-consumer sale via the Fusion Garage website as of November 19 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST). Fusion Garage remains committed to its joojoo customers and will continue support the device. Additional information on customer support will be available in the coming weeks.
Simultaneously, Fusion Garage has announced plans for a next generation product line which will include a new operating system built in part on Google’s Android OS. The new Fusion Garage products will not be backwardly compatible with joojoo nor will they carry the joojoo brand name. Those products are expected to reach market in the first half of 2011.
“We are very pleased by the rapidly increasing vertical market interest in joojoo,” said Fusion Garage founder and CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan. “Companies such as ASTEC are able to do some very innovative customization of the product and enable joojoo to be used in business applications that go beyond our consumer focus. At the same time, this marks the end of joojoo as a product and a brand for Fusion Garage. We have learned a lot and will carry forward insight gained from joojoo to our new generation of products that we will introduce in the first half of 2011.”
Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet hasn’t exactly set the world alight – though it is keeping some lawyers in business – but the Singaporean start-up is already looking to the second-gen model. According to Gizmodo, the new JooJoo is expected to arrive in early 2011, and use Android as its OS. While it may not have access to the Android Market, Google’s policies depending, what Fusion Garage is working on is their own UI system which pulls together messaging and social networking.
For instance, the company intends to pull all messaging services – such as Gmail, Facebook messages and other accounts – into a single interface, rather than leaving the user hopping between various apps. The second-gen JooJoo will be the first of a new range of devices, replacing the original slate.
As for the ongoing legal battle, Fusion Garage claims it’s having little effect on their daily operations. Sales, meanwhile, are supposedly “lower than expected” but reasonable in Europe and Asia. Still no publicly released numbers, however.
Fusion Garage are coming in for some criticism over their handling of the JooJoo tablet’s software, with open-source advocates discovering that the company aren’t distributing their source code as required by the GPL. Matthew Garrett spent some hands-on time with the JooJoo recently, and aside from some concerns over the hardware – “pretty much held together by string and a following wind” is how he describes the slate – his biggest complaint is that not only is the source for Fusion Garage’s modified Ubuntu OS not available, when he contacted them they told him they’re not yet distributing it.
“We are still actively making changes to the joojoo software. We will make the source release available once we feel we are ready to do so and also having the resources to get this sorted out and organized for publication. We seek your kind understanding on our position and appreciate your patience on this. Thank you.” JooJoo support team, Fusion Garage
As for the hardware, Garrett suggests it’s a case of ambition without sufficient technical skills to back it up, and highlights things like the display being connected upside down (so apps have to be rotated before they can be shown) and components simply being glued to a basic NVIDIA reference board. Of course, there are some happy users out there and some disappointed ones; the real issue is Fusion Garage apparently not taking software licensing seriously. They’re certainly not the first company to fall short in that respect, but if you’re hoping developers will jump on board – and even help out spotting flaws in your code – then this isn’t the way to go about it.
The JooJoo is one of those tablets that may have been more suited for the past, instead of the present. While the CEO of Fusion Garage firmly believes that his tablet device, formerly known as the CrunchPad, is better than the competition, sales numbers, and reviews, would likely speak to the opposite effect. So, if you were one of the handful of people out there to actually order (and receive) your JooJoo, we’ve got some exciting news for you! You can now install OS X on it.
There isn’t much information to go on here, but we don’t imagine that there necessarily should be, either. As you can see from the image, that’s definitely Mac OS X running on a JooJoo. So obviously if Windows 7 isn’t your thing, you now have some options. Thanks to the Fusion Garage tablet’s Atom processor, it makes it perfectly compatible with Apple’s Snow Leopard Operating System.
We’re not exactly sure why anyone would do this, unless they were just really bored, but we do have to say: it makes the JooJoo a bit more attractive. Now that we have Snow Leopard on there, we can’t wait to see what’s next. Anyone have any ideas?
If Fusion Garage’s latest JooJoo OTA update wasn’t enough to impress you, then how about Windows 7 Embedded on the JooJoo slate? That’s just what JooJoo owner darkdavy has done, loading up an evaluation of the Microsoft OS and turning the tablet from web-centric slab to general purpose Windows machine.
Video demo after the cut
As you might expect, not everything is working smoothly at this early stage. The touchscreen works – recognizing two points of multitouch contact – and WiFi and Bluetooth both play nicely, but integrated 3G isn’t up and running yet and neither is the accelerometer. The 1.3-megapixel camera works, as does suspending the system, and Windows 7 is reporting around 3.5hrs runtime from the standard battery.
According to fellow JooJoo owner xetra, who loaded up Windows 7 Home with the touch pack, the “system is very fast”. Of course, with only 4GB of SSD storage to play with – and around 1GB left after the OS has its way – this probably isn’t a netbook replacement unless you’re willing to rely mostly on the cloud for your files.
Fusion Garage has confirmed that the promised JooJoo software update has been released OTA to existing owners. Tipped to address UI problems and bring full-screen Flash video playback to the iPad-alternative, the new firmware has also been loaded onto demo JooJoo units Fusion Garage have been toting for their European roll-out; unfortunately, judging by some hands-on impressions with the updated unit, it’s still not perfect.
While Flash support is apparently better, the accelerometer remains a frustration; it’s prone to lag or even freezing in one orientation and refusing to change. We’ll have to wait until a full re-review of the hardware to see quite how good a challenge the JooJoo now presents, but ironically it may be what the tablet doesn’t come with that gives it a foot in the door: Fusion Garage reckon that they’ve heard a surprising amount of critique for Apple’s policies – whether their App Store guidelines, or their general restrictions on things like multitasking – which of course works in the JooJoo’s favor.
The good news just keeps on coming for the JooJoo. It’s about time, too, considering early reviews aren’t necessarily the brightest. And, while Fusion Garage’s CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan says that new software, along with a European launch, are on the way, this new bit of news from the company’s head is definitely a little bit more worthwhile.
According to Rathakrishnan, there’s two big extras coming. The first, and perhaps most notably (considering you’ll have to buy another model, if you were one of the 64 to buy the first, we mean), is the confirmation that there will be a JooJoo with 3G connectivity. And, best of all, it’s apparently coming in a matter of only 3 months. So, if you were waiting for 3G, there you go. At least you know it’s coming. Eventually.
As for the other big change, the company is going to allow for USB mass storage, thanks to unlocking the USB port on the tablet. This would indeed make it stand out from the competition, but not necessarily push it ahead of the pack. And, considering the iPad WiFi + 3G iPad is available today, we’d imagine that has a bit of a jump on the situation. Though, if the HP Slate is dead (or not), along with the Courier from Microsoft’s demise, maybe the JooJoo just got a little boost. Or not. Your call.
Would-be JooJoo buyers in Europe can now order Fusion Garage’s web-slate, with the company’s online store being updated to offer international shipping. The tablet – which is priced at $499 in the US – comes in at £319 ($486) in the UK and €359 ($474) in mainland Europe. Meanwhile, according to the new Fusion Garage blog, sales have increased as the JooJoo proves it’s not vaporware, while the company accepts that they’ve handled some things poorly and promises a fast-approaching software update.
“We are in the midst of bad joojoo for a very simple reason: We were aggressive in our product delivery commitments, decided to completely revise our UI as we were readying the product for release and our initial units shipped with software that proved to be problematic when put to the test in the real world.” Chandra Rathakrishnan, Fusion Garage
The new software – which, it’s promised, will be released “shortly” – will apparently address most of the issues initial reviews picked up on. That will include the ability to play full-screen HD video.
As for comparisons with the iPad, according to Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan”we may be ambitious but we are not delusional” and they have no plans to position themselves as an “iPad killer”. Frankly we’re just surprised to see a gadget that works out cheaper in the UK and Europe than its US price.
Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet wasn’t exactly the storming success the company might have hoped for, and finally shipping only days in advance of the iPad going on sale certainly didn’t help matters. So just how many JooJoo tablets were sold? Going by a shoddily constructed email that looks to have gone out to all of the company’s customers, the total could be just 64.
UneasySilence got their hands on a Fusion Garage email asking customers for feedback on the tablet, but the support staff responsible for writing it used the “To:” field rather than the “BCC:” one. That mean that all the owners could see each other’s addresses (blanked out for privacy’s sake in the image above) and, more importantly, they could be counted.
The grand total is 64, which – if that’s the sum total of JooJoo sales – would make for a particularly depressing launch. Of course, this could only be a partial list, but UneasySilence say they’ve had separate confirmation from another tipster that the figure is accurate.
Conspiracy theorists start your engines: either the JooJoo really is shipping, or Fusion Garage have crafted a special unit just for Engadget to unbox and are sitting, sniggering behind their hands at our ongoing gullibility. Mere days before the iPad is set to hit shelves, the contentious JooJoo has finally arrived and – going by the demo video which you can see after the cut – it even works, too.
Fusion Garage announced late last month that the JooJoo was (finally) shipping to preorder customers, though there was speculation about exactly how big a group of people that actually was. The whole project has been laced with difficulty; the company initially partnered with TechCrunch to product the so-called CrunchPad, but the relationship broke down and resulted in ongoing legal spats.
Engadget are promising a full review once they’ve had a chance to play with the JooJoo a little, a move which is already whipping up their comments section into a frenzy (so much so, in fact, that they’ve turned them off). To be honest, while iPad-Eve isn’t maybe the best time to get your gadget out there, it’s perfect if you want to go head to head on functionality with what’s likely to be the biggest attention-guzzler of the moment, the iPad.
