From a piece I published on April 14, 2009:

I have admitted that I was skeptical about the CrunchPad, but I must also admit that the device looks pretty solid and has a very clear path to the market.

That was nearly a year ago, but earlier this month the CrunchPad finally shipped to customers, albeit under a different moniker. I think we were all a bit skeptical and although there might only be about 100 of them in the wild, Fusion Garage actually managed to get this thing out the door.

I don’t know if anyone truly thinks that this could be a credible iPad competitor but I certainly know Paul Miller doesn’t. From the wrap-up section of his review on Engadget:

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.

When the CrunchPad project was first announced I was actually excited about it. The idea of a 10-12 inch tablet computer built specifically for browsing the web sounding great. But a good idea can only get you so far. Shoddy software and litigation is a recipe for failure.