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WePad and JooJoo Now Available for Pre-Order in Europe.


If you’re in Europe, I’ve got good news for you.  The JooJoo tablet [News, specifications] is now available to pre  order.  No, don’t laugh because there’s an interesting twist here.  The price.

Ignore the  reviews  for a  minute and think about a 12 inch multitouch capacitive screen with BT, Wifi, SSD, Nvidia ion and the Atom1.6 CPU.  Then add (I assume its possible) Ubuntu, Moblin, X86 Android or some other flavor  of Linux  and  you’ve got  yourself  quite  a nice experimental pad  for just 359 Euros. If you like the though of developing or working with a home tablet, that’s not a bad price. With the right software it could make for  a really nice home theater component. Even XP should run on it if  you can squeeze it  into  the 4GB Flash. It’s no  iPad  and you’ll  have to contend with short battery life but it could be more fun than an Archos 9 which costs more, for less.

wepad_homescreen If  you’re in Germany, there’s even more ‘pad’ news for  you today because the WePad  just  went up for pre-order on Amazon.de [WePad info, specs] 449 Euros buys you the non 3G, 16Gb version and 569 adds another 16GB and the 3G module.

There’s no direct word on shipping dates for either of  the two devices but we had previously heard that the WePad won’t  be shipping until June/July. The JooJoo is in production although this push for European orders  could be to fund the next production run a somewhat risky thought.

Is there something better  round the corner?  We think there might be. Despite good efforts by both companies concerned here we think that the current Intel Atom platform hasn’t got either the right  hardware or software build yet. That might change with  Moorestown and MeeGo but for the time being, we’re more interested in the ARM/Android platforms based on their  ground-up personal, touch and power-efficient architecture.

Meet:Mobility Podcast 47 – ‘Pad’ies Day


Meet:Mobility Podcast 47 is now available. Recorded on 9th April 2010.

Chippy, JKK and Sascha cover news about the iPad, the JooJoo, ICD Gemini, Hanvon Tablet, HP Slate and other consumer and mobile internet devices.

Full show notes, playback and download info at Meet:Mobility.

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You can also find the podcast on iTunes (Please rate the show on iTunes.) You can also subscribe via RSS.

JooJoo Review Reveals 2.5hr Battery Life. Move along please!


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

joojooreview-01-top

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:

Engadget JooJoo review.

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