Though the shipping date for JooJoo, the underdog tablet, was recently pushed back to March 25 , Fusion Garage isn’t letting that time go to waste. They’ve overhauled the JooJoo’s interface, expanded local video playback, and given its backplate a makeover. More

Though the shipping date for JooJoo, the underdog tablet, was recently pushed back to March 25 , Fusion Garage isn’t letting that time go to waste. They’ve overhauled the JooJoo’s interface, expanded local video playback, and given its backplate a makeover. More

Well, that didn’t take too long. Just a day after we pondered the shipping status of Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet, the company’s come clean and told us shipping will delayed to March 25 because of a manufacturing issue with the tablet’s 12.1-inch capacitive screen. Yep, it looks like it’s going to be at least 27 more days until you’ve got a JooJoo of your very own — which means, of course, that Fusion Garage will now be trying to launch this thing during the same week Apple’s scheduled to launch the iPad . Ouch. To its credit, Fusion Garage says it’s not happy with the delay and has promised a free accessory to pre-order customers to make it better — we’re told it’s likely to be the $30 stand.

That other tablet that was announced just a week ago sure doesn’t seem to be setting Fusion Garage’s Joojoo off course. Not only did it see an increase in orders after the iPad announcement, but Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishna just told us that production of the 12-inch tablet has kicked off and that the product is on target to start shipping this month. And it doesn’t sound like legal fees from fighting the TechCrunch lawsuit over the product are depleting Fusion Garage’s bank account: Chandra told us it’s teamed up with OEM CSL Group of Malaysia, which will be footing the bill for manufacturing in exchange for a “low single-digit” percentage of product revenue. We have our doubts about the math, but we’ll see how happy everyone is if and when the Joojoo starts shipping. (We’ll also see if James Cameron notices that Fusion Garage keeps using unlicensed Avatar images in its promo pictures.) Chandra still wouldn’t budge on revealing what’s powering the device, but he was more than happy to confirm that the tablet will support full Flash at launch, and HD Flash content once Flash 10.1 is officially released — YouTube HD will play right now using a separate player plugin that takes advantage of GPU acceleration.

After the iPad was announced for $499, (a few) people asked, “What about JooJoo ?” the first $499 web tablet , formerly known as CrunchPad . Well, it’s on . JooJoo’s now in full production, and plans to open a web app store. I talked to Fusion Garage CEO Chandra, who said they’re not only getting another round of investing, they’ve struck a deal CSL Group , Malaysia’s largest OEM—they make fabulous BlackBerry knockoffs called Blueberrys—to cover their full outgoing manufacturing cost in exchange for revenue sharing. In other words, CSL’s covering the cost to make the tablet (which is being made by one of the “top three or four” Taiwanese OEMs, according to Chandra), and CSL gets a slice of cash from every JooJoo sold

In the ongoing sadness that is the legal battle between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage over the JooJoo tablet, Fusion Garage has moved to dismiss Michael Arrington’s lawsuit entirely. The Fusion Garage claim seems to center around there being a “lack of any formal legal relationship or contract” between the two companies, despite their openly working jointly on JooJoo’s development. Much of the filing is the legalese version of JooJoo’s previous response , and in parts reads like a terribly depressing (and one-sided) history of what could have been a terrific device. That is, before it became pretty much irrelevant .

After publishing Fusion Garage’s response to Arrington’s lawsuit , a reader noticed that Fusion Garage is violating PayPal’s terms with their Joojoo pre-sales. The Joojoos are supposed to be delivered in 8 to 10 weeks, which is prohibited by PayPal: ll.4 – Prohibited Transactions. You also agree not to use your PayPal account to sell goods with delivery dates delayed more than 20 days from the date of payment, or to sell securities, business opportunities, franchises or multi-level marketing or goods with delivery delayed more than 20 days from the date of payment. That is weird.

Fusion Garage—manufacturers of the JooJoo , the web tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad—have responded to Arrington’s lawsuit and posts against them . Not surprising, they are saying that his claims are entirely without merit: • Fusion Garage claims that they have received $3 million in funding so far, and they are getting ready to announce a new round in the coming weeks. • They also claim that they are financially viable, and fully capable of bringing the Joojoo to market, underlining that it is their intellectual property—quite frankly, I don’t see much “intellectual property” in a bloody web tablet, from Arrington, Fusion Garage, or the Pope. • They say that their relationship with Pegatron was a failure and “Arrington’s promises of hardware development support proved to be hollow.” • As a result of that failure, they are now using another design, by another original design manufacturer. That’s why Arrington’s claims about Fusion Garage using Pegatron’s intellectual property are false, Fusion Garage claims. • They claim that Arrington’s “nebolous attacks” against Rathakrishnan—one of the Joojoo investors— are completely false, and show his desperation to raise doubts on the company

Up until now, the only official shot of the Joojoo tablet was that seductive snippet of the corner. ‘Course, you got a pretty good look of the thing if you bothered to watch our sit-down with Fusion Garage’s Chandra Rathakrishnan, but it’s still a pleasing sight to see the company push out a nice gallery of press shots to really tickle the senses. We aren’t exactly sure if these guys have Cameron’s approval to use Avatar screen shots to promote their product, but at this point , we wouldn’t put anything regarding the Joojoo beyond the realm of feasibility. Oh, and if you were wondering how you’d eventually use this thing as an at-home movie viewer, the $29.99 dock accessory pictured above is the answer.

We had a chance to sit down and talk with Chandra Rathakrishnan of Fusion Garage yesterday for a more in-depth discussion than our previous meeting provided, and we learned a few interesting tidbits about both the Joojoo , as well as the company’s highly public troubles with Michael Arrington (before the latest move ). Amongst the more juicy items discussed, we got further technical info on the Joojoo itself, including the fact that the system has 1GB of RAM, a separate GPU for graphics processing (which Rathakrishnan says is capable of at least iPhone level gaming), and an interesting slot along the side. Just what kind of slot, you ask? Well apparently there are plans for a 3G equipped version of the Joojoo on the horizon.