The JooJoo Hands-On: Sexy, But Too Expensive

Just one day after its announcement, the JooJoo box has been prodded and tested. The folks over at CNET got their hands on a JooJoo and set to trying it out. Their findings were pretty much what you'd expect. The JooJoo is very slim, lightweight, and easy to use. The touchscreen is great and the form factor received nothing but kudos.

However, there were plenty of critiques. For one thing, this WiFi device is billed as a 720p HD media player. Unfortunately, many WiFi connections just don't offer the bandwidth needed to watch a streaming high-def film. The JooJoo boots fast, gets up and running in under 9 seconds, and the proprietary OS does a great job of pushing all power to the browser.

The bottom line is; this tablet was made for browsing. It's great at surfing the Internet. Unfortunately, that's all it can do. CNET pointed this out and I'm happy to reiterate it...consumers are not going to buy a $500 tablet in bulk. The economy is crap right now and the JooJoo is a tablet without practical use. You can buy a very solid laptop for the same price and gain five times as much functionality.

Hell, if wanting a touchscreen is the issue there's nothing stopping you from nabbing one of Toshiba's $500ish multitouch netbooks. 8.9" isn't quite as nice as 12", but at least your netbook will be able to store media instead of being forced to just stream it.

This is the same problem that the theoretical Apple Tablet will have to face. It isn't enough to give people a 'bigger' version of a popular product. Making the iPhone's screen 12" doesn't create a more useful product, it just gives you an iPhone that's too damn large to fit in a pocket or take anywhere. Consumers will line up for miles to buy tablet PCs...when manufacturers find out how to deliver a unique user experience at an affordable price.

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