JooJoo Tablet to Beat Apple's iPad to Market

The tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad is now shipping and orders are expected to arrive on March 29.

Fusion Garage's JooJoo tablet has started shipping to the United States and a press release from the company promises that orders will start arriving this coming Monday, March 29.

The JooJoo has been at the center of an awful lot of controversy over the last few months. It was TechCrunch's Michael Arrington who had the idea for the tablet and brought Fusion Garage on as a partner. After months of working together on the project, Arrington announced his departure from the team, claiming the whole thing had been ruined by jealousy and greed. Arrington claimed Chandra Rathakrishnan, the CEO of Fusion Garage, had given him the boot, preferring to go ahead with the tablet alone.

Around the same time, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan announced that the company would press on with the project as planned and the JooJoo was born. Gone were TechCrunch's plans for a $200 Web surfing tablet and instead, consumers were offered a $499 tablet from Fusion Garage. Not too long after the JooJoo debuted, Arrington filed an IP theft lawsuit against Chandra and his company. However, this didn't stop the JooJoo from going on pre-sale on December 11.

Today those who pre-ordered the tablet more than three months ago should have their new toy by Monday. Specs-wise, you're looking at 12.1 inch capacitive touchscreen (1366 x 768), WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, an integrated Web cam for video chat, 1 X USB, support for Flash and Java, a 4GB SSD, built in speakers, a mic, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Web-centric OS with a boot time of 9 seconds.

Check out the JooJoo website for more information.