All of the drama surrounding the CrunchPad [ Related: CrunchPad Litigation Imminent ] seems to not have stopped Fusion Garage from relabeling the CrunchPad the JooJoo.

Possessing a rather large 12.1″ Capacitive screen, the JooJoo runs off a *Nix based OS that boots directly into a browser that houses all of the applications that will be used by this machine. The JooJoo has no physical buttons on the outside other than the power button and has a 4gb SSD, Wifi (no 3G), an accelerometer and about a 4-5 hour battery life.

Pre-orders start on December 11th for $499 USD.

Yeah… funky name for a product that might eventually be stopped from being sold due to pending litigation.

[ Links: The JooJoo, Engadget Hands On ]

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch has finally announced what many people had already assumed months ago… that the Crunchpad, an internet tablet that allowed for quick access to the web in an inexpensive gadget that offered 12 inches of capacitive touch screen goodness is finally dead. Gone. Vaporware like the Infinium Labs Phantom.

t was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves – the user interface was intuitive enough that people “got it” without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it….

And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.

Ouch. Here’s to what it could have been…

[ TechCrunch ] [ PC World ]