Amazon Kindle To Debut On Monday - Ugly But Impressive
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It uses the same small 6.4", 800x600 screen as the Sony Reader and has a resolution of 167 dpi. Low quality print is at 600 dpi or more.
Even if it supports PDF format, you wouldn't want to try reading pdf documents on it because you'd either have to shrink a page down to 35% or so of the full size (so it fits fully on the screen) or only render 1/3 of a page at a time.
Finally, for $400, this thing is ridiculous. It's interesting that Motorola in their low-cost cell phones (the Motorola F3) uses the e-Ink display, but these book readers are sold/marketed as premium products. Ugh.
Go into a Borders or a Sony shop to take a look at the Sony reader to get an idea of the screen size. The text rendering is impressive but not worth $300 or $400. e-Ink display technology is neat, but this first generation of products is lousy.
I have the Sony reader and love it, but this thing is fugly.
There is different types of eink I think the phone screens are not bit mapped.
On the whole I think this is going to flop. Most people do not want to carry around a tablet when a paperback is what they want. All the gizmos are a waste.
Also, why add dumb features like wireless? Simplify, the ebook has a built in mp3 player, guess how many people use it?
The sony could be improved by upping it's resolution to 300dpi, make the screen a little bigger. Keep the same cool form factor and remove some useless buttons. Put a front light on it. And remove the DRM, DRM will keep killing ebooks until publishers get a clue.
I also think there is room for an ereader with a 300dpi letter sized display, panasonic had really cool looking prototype. Give me that in a sony style package with a pdf reader and I'll gladly fork over $1K for it.
Currently working through Guttenberg, amazing how Mickey Mouse has totally corrupted the idea of public domain.
Since it runs Linux I'm sure it could handle pretty much any format you throw at it, given the right software.
$400 (including donation of a laptop to a child), so same price, but can do a hell of a lot more. Plus it looks cool. Plus you're donating a laptop to a child.
One week left... http://laptopgiving.org/
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
Now if only someone would figure out a way to decouple that from the device itself.... :-D
The design is ugly, but the capabilities rock out.
I'm sure there is a way to get even DRMed PDFs into the right format, though most people won't know how or won't bother.
Turns out there is a free alternative but it sucks (takes 15 minutes per file)..and that's now without the system being overloaded.
Worse news...no PDF support, not even via email
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/15-things-i-just-le...
Also, what makes you think that I purchase all my documents? What about papers I have downloaded off the web for free? Technical documents? Reports? God. The device has USB. It has an SD card. It has EVDO. But I can't transfer my DOC and PDF files directly without waiting for 15 minutes and/or paying 10 cents per file?
But you're right. No PDF support is idiotic.
[edit: a tool to print an ebook to a textfile makes this easy]
a) Smaller screen b) E-Ink displays are much easier on the eyes (no strain)
Still, 400 for a box that won't even let me read my PDFs or blogs that I can read for free. No thank you, I'll continue using my 12 inch laptop (eye straining as it is).