Sure, you may've already downloaded an early Chrome OS build on your current machine, but unless you want it to be your sole platform, and running just the way Google intended, then you'll need to buy the official hardware. Acer's stated its intent to be first with a product release, presumably at the tail-end of next year, but ASUS, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba are also involved in the Chrome OS project too.

A "request for proposal" has already been issued to potential suppliers, such as those mentioned above, supposedly listing the specifications Google would like to see in that first netbook. Google is believed to be working with just the one manufacturer, to build the ideal netbook. TechCrunch's sources are claiming they'll be 3G-embedded, and quite possibly subsidized by a carrier.

Michael Arrington, editorializing at this point, goes on to say that:

"I'd be willing to bet one of our writers' right hands that it's ARM [as opposed to an Intel Atom processor]. And I'd even go out on a limb and suggest that they may very well be targeting Nvidia's Tegra line."

Adobe, Freescale, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are the other parties already working with on the Google Chrome OS project, so presumably the netbook will contain some components from them as well.

So, which company do we think Google will choose in this all-important talent show? Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo or Toshiba, or even someone else? ASUS obviously has strong heritage with netbooks, thanks to inventing the market for it back in 2007, but Acer launched the first Android-powered netbook. HP, Lenovo and Toshiba have all produced some solid netbooks in their time, but haven't quite measured up to Acer and ASUS' success just yet. [TechCrunch]

Specs

Here are some new facts I gathered from the meeting. First, the device runs a 1.6GHz Atom processor with 1GB RAM. The guys at JooJoo said they weren't ready to reveal specs yet, but I saw the bootup sequence—a standard BIOS setup that displayed what it was booting to—and saw the specs. Chandra, CEO of Fusion Garage, says that the demo hardware was basically the final hardware, so it's easy to put two and two together.

As for the graphics card + CPU combination, it's probably an Nvidia Ion chipset. They claim that it handles 1080p YouTube video fine—we only got to see a few seconds of 720p and 1080p HD YouTube video because the internet connection was acting up—so it's probably an Ion. But the HD video we tested looked just fine on its 12-inch, 1366x768 resolution screen. Again, the Ion chipset is just an educated guess, but there are few other hardware options that can handle 1080p video smoothly, and an Atom CPU by itself (which we did see) can't do it on its own.

There is a headphone jack, a microphone jack, a built-in webcam at 1.3 megapixels, a charging port and a USB slot. The external card slot present in the prototype isn't going to make it to the final version, but they are thinking of making it available to put a 3G card in there in the future. No TV out/HDMI out yet, but they are thinking about that. There are built-in speakers for playing back audio without headphones, and they're decent enough that you can actually listen to them, but you'll want to plug them in to speakers for any kind of extended video consumption.

Performance

The tablet actually handled pretty well, with browsing web pages, transitioning between tabs (windows) and opening up new web pages working fine. There's an accelerometer in there to detect between vertical and horizontal orientations.

The body is solid, sturdy and graced with a bright 12-inch screen. The back is curved and made of a plastic that feels nice in your hand, and the whole thing doesn't seem too heavy to prop up on a bed or a toilet.

In short, it's an actual web browsing tablet that you'd be perfectly fine using.

The software

The entire system is basically a gateway to your browser, which is based off WebKit, the same code that powers Safari and Google's Chrome. It's fast, and handles gestures (pinching to go back a level, swiping to move up and down) just fine. There are other gestures that will be included in the final build, like two finger swiping for going back and forth in history and a bookmark swipe, but we didn't get to see that. But, you can't zoom into text. That's partially because the pinching is already used for going in and out of your windows into the home screen, but also partially because the screen is 12 inches. You don't need to really zoom into text on a laptop-sized screen of 12 inches. And they also said they may make LARGER sized tablets as well, with 12 being their smallest size.

JooJoo's keyboard looks like this, and takes up only a portion of the screen. It's usable, but you don't want to use it to bang out a blog post; this is mainly for consuming media.

Fusion Garage's concept for the product is that the "internet is the application", which means you can't save photos or files locally and you can't access any of the 4GB of storage to do any user level stuff. The most you can dictate is how much each internet application (e.g. Gmail or Google Wave) can have for a local cache.

It does support Flash as usual, except when you play HD Flash it'll force you into fullscreen mode to render better/faster. And if you want to read PDFs, it'll force you into Google's web-based PDF doc reader. So it handles PDFs, but not "natively".

Your home screen is composed almost entirely of icons—shortcuts—to web applications. The screen is customizable with your own applications, eventually, and has a weird feature where it displays a different color background whenever you go back to it. Fusion Garage is thinking of taking this out, or swapping it with some other feature.

As for multitasking, Fusion Garage says that they will have specific APIs available to webapps to incorporate in order to pass notifications up to the user. For example, if Twitter refreshes in another window and you're watching a YouTube video, a popup will show and tell you you have something else going on. The APIs will be available at launch, but it's up to websites to support them.

How good is it?

Despite its weird birth issues this past week with all the Arrington trouble, the JooJoo is surprisingly solid. You can tell Fusion Garage spent a good deal of time polishing the hardware, by the fact that they managed to include a 12-inch screen that's decent enough to not have lousy viewing angles, plus support 1080p HD video playback.

The only trouble right now is software, which is only about 75% done. Fusion Garage plans to ship devices about 8-10 weeks after preorders, which start this friday. If FG can manage to finish the software and get it to a point where it's transparent to the user who just wants to get online, $500 isn't too outrageous a price to pay. Decent netbooks are around that price, and it's about the price you'd expect Apple to charge for their tablet, if not even more. We'd of course be very happy if it were down at $300 or $400, but it's basically a new device in a new market, and you'll have to hand over a little extra for being an early adopter.

So right now we're at a wait and see status. The JooJoo seems good, from our time with it, but it really needs to be taken home and thoroughly tested with different webapps, watching a lot of HD video and streaming music. At the very least, we'll see how much of that 5-hour battery life stands up to constant use. You can pre-order it yourself this Friday, but, since there's some legal troubles on the horizon, you probably want to wait until the whole thing clears up first before putting any money down. [JooJoo]

1. It's called the JooJoo. Chandra, the CEO of Fusion Garage, says it's an "African term that stands for a magical device."

2. The JooJoo will be a web-only tablet. Basically, it's like Chrome OS in that everything is done with online webapps, but you use a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. You'll have a 4GB local cache for storage, but don't think of it as real storage.

3. There's a lot of controversy involved. Arrington of TechCrunch asserts one thing, while Chandra of Fusion Garage asserts another. The short of it is, Fusion Garage booted Arrington out of the process recently because they claim that Arrington failed to deliver any of the promises he was supposed to, like hooking them up with VC funding and helping to market the device.

Fusion Garage claims that there was no contract between the two parties, and Arrington says that it's basically "in the lawyers hands now".

4. Here are the specs: A screen-only tablet that measures 12-inches, has a capacitive touchscreen, runs its own operating system (that's basically just a browser) and boots in 9 seconds. It will also have a 5 hour battery life, run Wi-Fi only (no 3G) and come in only one color, with 4GB internal storage.

5. It will cost $500. Chandra said Arrington's claim of a $200 or $300 tablet was unfeasible and unrealistic, and compared it to smaller devices like the iPhone and netbooks.

6. It's going to be available for pre-order this Friday on their website.

7. Nobody in the tech community has seen it yet. We're going to get hands-on time with it soon, and will let you know how it feels firsthand.

8. The green screen shown in the webcast might be a trick of the camera. Chandra said, in the webcast, that there was nothing wrong with the screen, and that the colors look fine. But for a screen to look entirely green in a shot, it means that there might be seriously limited in its viewing angles.

9. We don't know when it will ship. Or even if it will ship, seeing as there's litigation between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch over it. So you might want to hold on to that $500 until they figure out when the device will launch.

10. No matter what, there's some bad feelings involved with the device. If Arrington is in the right—even if it is just ethically or spiritually and not legally—you may have a hard time justifying to yourself that you're giving money to a company that did something underhanded. But if Arrington is in the wrong, you still have the tinge of weirdness hanging in the air when you're using it.

And isn't Apple about to dump one of these on the market next year?

9:22: The stream was active for a second—I got a screencap of it above—but it looks like they shut off the video.

9:23: In case you're not familiar with the story, hit up this link while the webcast is still preparing, and check it out. Basically, Fusion Garage, on behalf of their shareholders, decided that they wanted to cut TechCrunch out of any involvement (besides a crappy advisor role) after the two parties had developed the thing together. Think of it as if your wife one day told you that she'd be raising your kid by herself, and your involvement was no longer needed.

9:28: It's sad, really, since the CrunchPad was supposed to be one of the first (if not the first) cheap tablets that was designed just for web browsing and "consuming" content. The perfect bed/toilet computer, essentially.

9:29: I mean, even if it does end up being released under a different name by Fusion Garage without TechCrunch's involvement, would you buy it? Or would you be loyal, in principle, to TechCrunch, since they're the ones who actually came up with the idea?

9:30: It's a tough decision. Would most people care about petty stuff like this if the final product was good? Would most people even KNOW about it? Probably not.

9:31: Though, we'll get to hear FG's side of the story today. Who knows if TechCrunch's side was the entire truth. It'll probably end up being somewhere inbetween.

9:34: It's starting. Chandra is saying this webcast is a good way to address misconceptions introduced by Arrington's TC post.

9:36: "I'm a dreamer of big dreams." And he's a engineer.

9:36: Chandra is going over his past as an engineer. He's saying he's upset by all the posts on him from the last week.

9:37: "Fusion Garage is the only actual do-er in this story."

9:37: Since 2008, they tried to make a browser-based operating system that supported a "thin, tablet-like touchscreen device."

9:38: In his first meeting with Arrington, he explained what FG was developing, and how his OS would be the key to making the "vision a reality". Mike Arrington would introduce them to investors, secure funding and introduce them to hardware vendors. He would want to make a deal so TechCrunch could acquire the company so that Mike would have controlling interest. They had many talks about the acquisition, but nothing solid ever came out of it.

9:40: Mike was "unable to deliver", in February 2009. Without further development, including a finished prototype, nobody would provide funding to bring a product to market. He then takes a shot at the birthday cake photo.

9:40: "If the project was going to go forward, it would be up to Fusion Garage. It was clear that Michael was not able to deliver."

9:40: They finished their hardware prototype, and did all the engineering challenges by themselves—as you'd expect.

9:41: Chandra said that he secured funding through "his" network, instead of through Michael Arrington. It seems like this might be the thing that triggered the booting of Mike—the fact that TC couldn't deliver funding or connections.

9:42: Chandra is saying that there was no agreement for an acquisition by TC. There were talks, but no agreement. He's saying Fusion Garage owns all IP and proprietary rights for the production. The OS developed entirely by them. "TechCrunch didn't contribute a single line of code."

9:43: FG provided Arrington terms for being an advisor role, but was turned down.

9:44: The product will be introduced this week. And they call it Joojoo.

9:45: The reason why they call it Joojoo was because it's an "African term that stands for magical"

9:45: The device boots in 9 seconds.

9:46: All icons on the site are "web services", and the screen is really really green.

9:46: You can get online, to the internet, in 9 seconds.

9:46: It has a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen. "The largest screen of any device in its class on the market."

9:47: No physical buttons other than the on-off buttons.

9:47: Joojoo has no preloaded applications, Windows or menus. It will accept sliding and scrolling gestures with your fingers. And it can be used as a digital book. "The internet is the application", similar to Google's Chrome OS.

9:48: "Unfortunately Arrington's dream of $200 or $300 price for something like this was unrealistic. Nothing worthwhile can be delivered to market at that price." How are they pricing it?

9:48: The Joojoo is more than 3x the iPhone 3GS's screen. How about netbooks? Those have "noncapacitive touch and a poor web experience".

9:49: Joojoo "provides the best in class internet experience for everything we do." And it can "watch full HD videos," as well as read magazines and books. It weighs 1.1 kg.

9:50: It's going to be $499.

9:50: Preorders are available this friday on the Joojoo website. It'll be sold online only, without retail until the near future.

9:50: Q&A Section:

9:50: Q: "Please respond to Arrington's post."

9:51: A: "There is no legal case filed today. We are very confident in our position, and we believe we own all the IPs."

9:51: A: There are no contracts of any kind between us and TechCrunch.

9:51: Q: "What do you say to Michael saying you ambushing him out of the blue."

9:51: A: Chandra says, basically, Arrington failed on everything he promised he would do (funding, getting connections), so FG had to "move on on their own."

9:52: Q: "Other companies have tried to introduce tablets to the market and failed. Why is your device different?"

9:52: A: Tablets today run the full Windows operating system. They're expensive, and heavy, and it wasn't a form factor that could deliver the way you would like to use. "We believe we can make a big difference." Then he goes over the features like a 12.1-inch screen and the fact that they "don't boot to an operating system."

9:53: There have been verbal discussions about a possible acquisition, but "nothing was delivered on Michael's part." There weren't any verbal assurances, except for Michael saying that he wants to acquire the company.

9:54: Q: "What exactly was the offer you made to Michael that he refused?"

9:54: A: "Michael promised a lot of things, but he did not deliver. We offered the possibility to work with us, and be part of this. Despite us doing everything, software, hardware, funding. But Michael turned down the offer."

9:55: Q: "Can you comment on Google Chrome OS."

9:55: A: "They see things in relation to Netbooks, but we believe that Netbooks' use cases aren't what they should be for what you want to do."

9:56: Q: "What kind of offline capabilities does the machine have?"

9:56: A: You can use your Gmail, for example, using a local cache. You'll synchronize when connectivity is available.

9:56: Q: "Does this product have any real chance to succeed without TechCrunch's marketing?"

9:57: A: If you define marketing as doing a blog post, then no. Michael has been "talking about this for the longest while." He really wants to hammer home that Arrington didn't deliver on any kind of promises.

9:57: Q: "What are the specs?"

9:57: A: "It has a 12.1-inch screen, 4GB SSD, but most of the storage is stored in the cloud."

9:58: Q: "The screen was extremely green. Is that normal?"

9:58: A: "It's a trick of the camera. I'll show this in 1 to 1 demos, and the screen is fine, and the colors are fine."

9:58: Q: What is the battery life?

9:59: A: 5 hours. Wi-Fi only.

9:59: Q: Do you have any relationships with content providers?

9:59: A: No. We're in discussions with companies.

9:59: Q: Will there be any Joojoo accessories?

10:00: A: Yes, we'll announce them in the next couple weeks.

10:00: Q: Will we be showing complete demos in 1:1 meetings?

10:00: A: Yes.

10:00: There will be one color at the moment.

10:00: "We think there will be a lot of demand for this product."

10:01: Fusion Garage has raised 3 million to date since 2008.

10:01: "Thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to seeing many of you over the coming weeks."

10:01: That looks like the end. I'll be getting a hands on with this thing as soon as possible, so check back for that.

It wasn't because of high costs, as previously rumored. Essentially, Arrington got screwed. Badly.

But the email went on. Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifiying Apple a couple of days before launch that they'd be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

Chandra also forwarded an internal email from one of his shareholders. My favorite part of the email: "We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavor…If he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don't think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name."

And with that, the entire project self destructed.

Be sure to read the entire story over at TechCrunch. The whole situation is lousy, and FusionGarage certainly doesn't come out looking all that smart in it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to work with them again after this, but I guess we'll have to wait and hear what their side of the story is. [TechCrunch]

Accordingy to Current.com.au, Danny Bejanoff of local distributor C.R. Kennedy says that iRiver hopes to launch an Android-based iPod Touch rival next year. Dubbed the K2, the device would have a 3.5-inch display, touch screen, Wi-Fi, built-in browser, accelerometer, Bluetooth, and even a digital TV tuner. The catch? Apparently the project is not yet 100 percent signed off.

Bejanoff went on to say that he also hopes to soon test a new iRiver e-book reader and Internet tablet. Is a three-way Web Tablet Battlemodo between iRiver, the possible Apple tablet and the CrunchPad looming? Did Current.com.au get Bejanoff drunk for that interview? If so, I'm Australian, why wasn't I invited?

[Current.com.au via Gizmodo Australia]

The reason he's quitting isn't because of AT&Ts horrible network, which everyone with an iPhone has been begrudgingly putting up with for two years now. No, it's the Google Voice debacle.

He really wants to use Google Voice, but in order to do so, he needs the app for it to really work. It's not just an inconvenience; it's seriously detracting from how he can use his cellphone. And with legit GV apps available for both BlackBerry and Android, he doesn't have to. So he's terminating his iPhone contract.

And really, power to him. If GV was important to me, I'd do the same. And I'm sure Arrington isn't the only person furious enough to cancel their iPhone service over this, he's just one of the most visible. So Apple, pay attention. Because lately your App Store nonsense has crossed from irritating to inexcusable, and that's just not going to work in the long term. [TechCrunch]

It's not entirely clear! Says the gentleman:

re crunchpad, obviously i'm completely ripshit mad about all this unauthorized bs press: http://bit.ly/2dVjBQ wtf.

He calls the press "bs," but if he really wants to tell us that the report is untrue, or rather, if the report really is untrue, a calm, flat denial could more or less end this—something I'm sure he knows. But no, the problem here seems to be that the report was "unauthorized," which is pretty much the greatest thing ever, of all time.

Aside from its iffy "World's First Tablet!" headline, the report sounds credible as a whole, based around an actual meeting the paper had with Fusion Garage, and it jibes with previous "coming soon" rhetoric that'd been circulating, so until a more reasoned, more specific and less hype-magnetic denial comes along, I'm inclined to believe it. UPDATE: The full spec sheet:

Hardware: A 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor and 1 GB RAM.
Software: Web-centric browser operating system, based on Web Kit, created by Fusion Garage.
Peripherals: One USB port is built-in, so users can connect a keyboard or mouse.
Connectivity: Built-in Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, and a port for mobile broadband.
Pricing: Not confirmed yet, though it is likely to be in the range of US$399.

There aren't really any surprises on the hardware end, since a storageless, minimalist tablet is exactly what was promised from the start. That unconfirmed $400 price, though, is a full hundred dollars more than expected. Granted, it's still pretty cheap—and well under the rumored prices for the Apple tablet—but if true, does still sour the whole concept a little bit. [Straits Times]

Arrington's incorporated a separate company, called CrunchPad, and has apparently spent two-thirds of the last six months working on it with his 15-man team from Fusion Garage.

It's been iterated a bunch before, but worth saying again, that the Atom-powered touchscreen CrunchPad is strictly for internet consumption—it boots directly into the WebKit browser and there's no hard drive or keyboard, though you can plug in a keyboard if you want. It does support for Flash, so Arrington's claim that compared to netbooks, "most people will find it works as good as a netbook or better" for getting their internet on sounds pretty reasonable, given its 12-inch screen. Pointedly, it's not meant to compete with Apple's mythical tablet, whenever it graces the world.

I'd take the under $300 CrunchPad over a netbook any day, since it seems like it'll surpass them at the one thing they were supposedly designed to do—eat the internet. And it still blows my mind it took a tech blogger to actually make it happen. [Bits]

Superfically, not much has changed from the previous prototype, except the updated CrunchPad now has an aluminum case and is 18mm thinner. The software has been updated too—as you can see in the video below—and boots directly into its Linux/Webkit-based browser. As for when you can get your hands on one of these, TechCrunch is currently working with partners to bring the $300 web tablet to the market. [TechCrunch]

It's a truly stripped little slab, designed by Fusion Garage: The "bottom-up" Linux OS it runs boots directly into a new version of the custom WebKit-based browser, with a total software footprint of just 100MB. The 12-inch touchscreen is capacitive (i.e. multi-touchable), and it runs on an Intel Atom chip (previously it was on Via's Nano). And since it can be built for $250, selling it for $300 looks likely.

It is purely for internet—it just runs the browser and associated apps for reading news and emails (and presumably there's gonna be a Twitter app), watching Hulu and YouTube, and video chat via tokbox. Which is actually exactly why I want it—it's very much of the recent trend of simple but catchy and beautifully designed monofunctional gadgets like the Peek and Flip—but the single task it performs is that it acts more like a window frame looking out at something much larger.

It's also a pretty exciting experiment in two regards: Do people really want to consume the web on a tablet? Just how swell of an OS is the internet, anyway? At $300, there's no harm in finding out, even if Arrington is being coy about the CrunchPad's future at the moment. Jason Calacanis says it's "so amazing!!! like a giant iPhone," so hopefully we'll know still more about it soon. Like, when? [TechCrunch]

The photos are now down from his posterous and Arrington declined to give us any more details or specs.
From the techcrunch twitterfeed:

fyi on the crunchpad buzz, photos were removed. apologies, they weren't ready for publication yet. added to our posterous account in error

More from TechCrunch, which has come forward with more details:

What you see is a prototype, equipped with an Intel Atom processor and a 12″ capacitative touchscreen.

Check out the keyboard.

I love this thing. Techcrunch will have more details next week.

This is technically the second prototype, but the first doesn't really bear noting—it barely started, didn't yet resemble the planned project and had a bare-metal accidental Steampunk aesthetic. This, well, this looks pretty close to the concept. The machine boots, browses the net, and operates with only a touchscreen and an onscreen keyboard. Behind the screen is a a Via Nano processor, 1GB of RAM and a 4GB flash drive, running a stock Ubuntu install and a custom WebKit browser (Konquerer with bigger buttons?).

The whole thing works pretty well, and I have to give Arrington props for pushing the project along this far. But! There's a catch:

We were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic

and:

The real question for us is whether this project has legs and should go forward towards production units, which is a very big step from a working prototype. That would require spinning the company off from the blog and building a team around Louis. It’s a decision we haven’t made yet.

Yeah, I'd say "are we going to even make this thing?" is a "real question", but even for $300, I kind of hope they do. [TechCrunch]

Here's the basic idea:

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

He's looking for people to help spec out the hardware and write the custom Firefox and Linux code for it. If you help, you'll be handsomely rewarded with a first-run edition of the to-be-named device if and when it ever becomes a reality.

Will it actually happen? I'm not sure, but it sounds pretty good to me. We'll see. [CrunchGear]