If the name JooJoo doesn’t ring a bell, that’s not a surprise. JooJoo is an iPad-like tablet that’s designed strictly for Internet usage. It doesn’t run any of the commercially available operating systems, thus needs no hardware drivers but provides the user with access to Internet applications like Web browsers, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the “usual suspects.”

Third Party Drivers May Someday Be “Supported”

The JooJoo tablet is a touchscreen device with iPad-esque styling, size and shape. It retails for about USD$500 and has just a single accessory… a stand that enables the pad to stand on a desktop. The JooJoo site is shockingly sparse on details, and contains only the barest information about the company, the product and the product’s capabilities.

Nonetheless, at least one enterprising user has posted a driver that enables the JooJoo to run Windows 7. The hacked Windows 7 driver doesn’t engage all of the JooJoo’s functions but gets most of them and in surprisingly good fashion. One of the big features that’s left wanting is the JooJoo’s accelerometer. The accelerometer is the component that enables these devices to reposition the screen when its orientation is changed, and to incorporate device motion as a command or data input. In other words, if you shake this device, it won’t do anything, and probably can’t calculate your carbon footprint if you take it for a ride in your Prius.

The origin of the driver presents an interesting alternative, however, for Windows users whose hardware isn’t supported by the hardware manufacturer. Some hardware is simply worth having, even when the manufacturer of the device doesn’t think so.

I suspect that, in at least some cases, we’ll see consumer demand for Windows device drivers for abandoned or orphaned products. That also opens the question of whether or not manufacturers that no longer want to support a particular device will support volunteer programmers (a la open source) who are willing to invest their time and talents to create a guerilla driver for an orphaned device. The support might include device information that the manufacturer has, work that it started and abandoned and/or code for the existing drivers.

Even if the original manufacturer isn’t willing to create a driver update, consumer demand may be steady enough to warrant the creation of a driver by a third-party. Sometimes (as demonstrated by the JooJoo hack), third parties will develop the driver anyway.

Photo Credit: José Goulão, via Flickr