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Yea, it looks nice. I'll have to see one up close. It's not the kind of thing that I'd drop cash money on unseen. I think the page delay can be a real problem for me, so I'd have to experience that up front.

But I'm a total fan of ebooks. I've been using just a crummy old Palm for my reader, and it works well enough.

I'm to the point that I'd rather have my "pleasure" books (rather than technical books) on the palm pilot than a normal book. It's a combination of ergonomics and reality.

Truth is I read lying on the couch, and when I'm on the couch the cat has determined that my sole purpose for being in that position is for a comfortable sleeping place for her, and she ends up monopolizing one arm.

So, I pretty much need to read with only one hand, and that's difficult to do with a normal book. But with an e-reader, it's practical and not uncomfortable.

But, also, it's far easier to carry these things than books when traveling and what not.

Too bad it will die like that.

I have yet to see a decent reader. These companies all seem to go out of their way to botch the job in various ways. And when they do manage to make a decent device, they just have to use it to push some futuristic technology like E-Ink and totally blow away the price.

Personally, I've given up on them and got myself a used NEC MobilePro 900c, a CF card and MobiPocket Reader. The wide screen makes for a nice reading, I have a full keyboard to annotate with, and MobiPocket has all kinds of nice features. Such as support for bloody HTML, unlike Sony's gizmo.

In order for an ebook reader to "make it" it needs this:
* Must be inexpensive. 50$ tops.
* Two buttons (page up/down), a LCD screen and a stylus. Plus two sliders or wheels on the side for contrast and brightness. That's IT.
* A card slot for an already accepted format: CF, SD.
* A reader application with support for all kinds of formats, including text, HTML and RTF. At the very least, must allow for bookmarks and remember where I've left off automatically. Also allow people to adjust background/text colors to their liking. Offer 2-4 fonts to pick from and allow to choose from a few different sizes.
* Just enough RAM to accomodate the reader and some text. You don't have to load the whole file into RAM at the same time, do you?
* If it used standard AA batteries it would be super.

That's it. How hard can it be, for God's sake? I don't need it to play music, organize my schedule or sync with my phone, just to let me page through some bloody text.

* Must be inexpensive. 50$ tops.

Did you really mean $50.00 or was that a typo? I cannot see a device like this, even subbing an LCD screen for the eInk screen, being less than $150.00-$200.00 USD.

Unless, of course, the electronic book publishers are heavily subsidizing the purchase price in the same way that cell phone carriers subsidize cellphones when you sign up for a two year service agreement.

Why not, you can buy computers these days around the 200$ price range. These don't need high power cpus, not even much memory. I'd definitely like to see some in the below-hundred price range and I don't think it's unrealistic. But, as long as it's treated as a "new" toy, the price won't go down.

Sure, why not $50? As the other reply points out, if you can get a full computer for $100-$200, why not a handheld for $50? After all, it would be a very simple device aimed at one task, not a general purpose PDA.

> NEC MobilePro 900c

It's big (over 3cm thick) and unacceptably heavy (over 800g). That's a deal breaker at least for me.

I've read heavier books. But anyway, you can go for a Jornada 7xx or a Palm Z22 or another handheld. The point is that we're forced to resort to general-purpose handhelds because there isn't a decent ebook reader available. The Franklin reader looked just about right, but they messed it up in various ways (no expansion card, not shipped outside North America, too expensive and so on).

Yes nice idea. As for "all of Proustn that would send you to sleep", I think you do not need all of it... ;-)

Good. Buy my ebook when its out later this year.
</shameless plug>

PDF on a PDA or any handheld with a small screen sucks 90% of the time. Most of it is due to the fact that PDF's don't reflow to adjust to the screen.

They do with a smart reader. E.g. Press ctrl-4 in acroread.

I recently retired my Palm T5 as a PDF/TXT/DOC reader and upgraded to a N800 specifically because the limitations of PDF on the T5s small screen finally became too much. (seems there's a new trend towards big margins and tiny text with the "print" link on most news articles these days)

The screen quality and refresh on the N800 is fantastic though. If you want Wifi, as much spaces as you get afford in two SD cards and a great screen then it may be worth looking at. Heck, if I'd known I'd have waited a few extra months for the N810.

I like the idea of the reader and have been tracking it's development distantly through Pop Sci articles but for me, it's like the iPod.. why would I downgrade to something which only plays music/video or only displays eBooks when that is but one of many functions in my already used PDA/Tablet.

(That's not to nock the idea by any means though. Some people want just a music/video player or just a text viewer.)

And you can install *debs as the OS underneath is debian based. In addition the news that Garnet provides access to the thousands of Palm applications still out there.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/14/palm_os_on_nokia/

Thom was just quoting from the article, the DRM jab is not his.

"Thom was just quoting from the article, the DRM jab is not his."

I'm very aware of how Thom quotes. In this instance. My response was *not* at Thom in the slightest. In reality Thom's quote is part of a strange perception that people have, with regards Sony, they had a well deserved kicking over the rootkit stuff, but its not on the level of the intrusiveness of Vista Spyware, or anywhere near the lock-in potential. The Xbox 360 is a great example of this with its ability to only play wmv formats streamed from WMC. I only know after seriously looking at buying one, but seriously thats garbage.

Pointing out the Memory Card Duo is a misnomer when you consider it comes with a SD slot. Its a nonsense really. In fact it works without DRM as well. Which is more than the choice offered by Microsoft. I say that this kind of abuse is only done by the *leading vendor* in any field; Its not a *Sony characteristic*. Now if Thom did that on purpose which I wouldn't say is below him. I just don't think is the case.

The only other thing I mention is upgradeable firmware, a device like this is only of value that it uses Linux if it has free software characteristics.

What is clear about the quote is this is *about* replacing books etc or even a new way of accessing information from books. Thats what this device lives and dies....and I would say dies on, yet the whole point on this is lost in an anti-sony quote that is mose to do with its *music* playing ability!? Which has nothing to do with the device fulfilling its purpose.

This is a more sensible quote
"The reading experience is so much like reading a paper novel that any report on it will read like a remedial lesson in using a book. (Note: if you have in fact forgotten how to use a book, it's time to step away from the keyboard.) Nevertheless, there are a few observations to make."

The section that Thom quoted was the initial paragraph, which is exactly the same way a lot of news aggregator sites quote from their various feeds.

You complain about Thom's dislike for Sony and then proceed to rant about Microsoft. Grow up.