It’s Not A New Kindle, It’s The iriver Story

@Keeter: The iRiver company has been around for quite a long while. And actually has been around for longer than apple got the rights to marketing products with an "i" in the beginning.

gnarlydragon

@Kaiser-Machead: LOL - look, people that haven't experienced the Kindle, with E-Ink and ability to type to search for a book for instant download just don't get the picture. And I read e-books on my palm for close to 10 years while commuting, it was great, but E-ink on a decent sized display is a big leap ahead.

operator99

@Pope John Peeps II: (sigh) OBVIOUSLY for notes IN BOOKS you're reading. Useful for Robert Jordan, and other authors which have 5 billion main characters and you need to jot something. Also useful for search functionality, the built-in web browser for quick and dirty stuff (google maps works pretty well actually, and free interwebs...), and for searching for a book on the kindle store, and... you know, all of the other very obvious reasons.

nbolmer

@Elranzer: It is improving though, quite a bit. There will be faster refresh rates in the future.

nbolmer

@Elranzer: +infinity. Comparing an ebook reader to a tiny cell phone display is wrong on so many levels, I'd love to go into details, but they're so OBVIOUS I won't bother.

nbolmer

@Pasha: Agreed. The battery can be smaller, as can the electronics due to reduced power consumption. With present e-ink technology you'd have to give up backlighting, video and color (until color e-ink hits the market). Also, a hybrid display combining OLED and e-ink might be feasible. You could only light up the OLEDs in certain sections of the display (e.g. in a video window) and use e-ink for the static areas. A device like that the size/weight of an e-book would be very attractive to me.

@craighyatt: I pretty much had a similar idea when i got my netbook, and my co-worker got a kindle. If they make a netbook with an e-ink display that won't eat the battery, and actually make it very lightweight, it would be perfect. It could even be a straight tablet, with no built it keyboard. I only use my netbook to surf the web anyway, so fast typing is not needed.

Pasha

@Elranzer: I totally agree, if there's no e-paper on the tablet, it will be useless as an e-reader device.

Tru-Mann

@nightwheel: That's impossible. An eBook reader's e-ink screen has a refresh rate of zero, so watching anything animated on it defeats the purpose.

The little balls inside the e-ink display flip only when you change a page. It's meant for displaying static screens only, imitating real paper. It is not a monitor for viewing video content.

Elranzer

@yogibimbi: E-ink is a completely different type of display. It looks like real paper that can change, not just an LCD screen (which causes your eyes to tire after looking at).

Please learn about these things before making a quip.

Elranzer

@olternaut: If the so-called Apple tablet doesn't use an e-Ink display, then no, it won't even compete in the eBook reader market. If you don't understand the advantage of e-Ink over a TFT/LCD screen for reading (no light, no flicker, looks like paper), then you have no real opinion on the market other than being a fanboy.

I almost don't even see the point of the tablet. Steve Jobs didn't either, which is why Apple never made one.

Elranzer

@olternaut: I don't think an Apple tablet will touch the core market of e-readers at all. Casual readers may opt for the tablet, but the people willing to shell out for a dedicated reading device are likely doing so for the long battery life and low eye strain of e-ink.

@craighyatt: point taken. It took me some time getting used to the little screen as well. But I'm a traveller and a minimalist, so the savings in weight are priceless, when compared to paper books (when I had my dad send over my personal belongings when I was staying in Mexico, most of the approx. 250-kilo weight of the box was in books) and even the extra gadget when carrying a reader.
This way I can read on the train and everywhere just by taking out my phone and never fearing of using up the battery.
It also took me a while getting used to transition from creative writing on paper to a computer screen but, again, the savings in paper and also the aspect of having all stuff in one place were well worth the effort.
I guess, if you don't need to keep things small and mobile, carrying around an additional gadget is oK, so you don't need to change your reading habits. So far I am very happy with my changes, though.

yogibimbi

@Keeter: "first white piece of hardware, nor did they invent the rectangle" i.e. typing paper

I totally get that Apple didn't create the first white piece of hardware, nor did they invent the rectangle... But when you make something white, AND put a little i in front of the name, AND make it look like a huge iPod, that's just being a copycat

@Chewbenator: The keyboard for notes, the QWERTY for familiarity... I have an old organizer with alphabetically arranged keys - it is unusable to anyone who knows their way around a "normal" keyboard.

taodude

Nice. But it's still a copy of the kindle. Gawd, the Apple tablet is going to utterly destroy these "e-readers". I kinda feel sorry for them...almost.

olternaut

@yogibimbi: I don't know about your other points, but I wouldn't want to read a whole book on my smartphone (might listen to the audio version, though). Just my opinion, but the small screen size of a typical smartphone like your Palm makes it sub-optimal for extended viewing of ebooks, websites and movies. OK for looking something up on Google or scanning the news, though. My personal "dream device" is $300, about the form-factor of this iRiver, similar battery life, color display, network connectivity, removable storage slot. Display capable of video would be extra credit if it didn't affect the specs too much (i.e. cost, size, weight, battery life) but video/gaming is of secondary interest to me.

ok, mmm, let's see...: my Palm Centro can read eBooks, matter of fact, I have been reading eBooks on it for about 3 years now (at the moment I am reading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins - no joke). It cost me about 300 USD, can connect to the internet using EVDO, has a small color screen, completely sufficient for reading, battery life of 1.5 eternities, an mp3 player, Excel, Word (for editing), dictionaries, Tom Tom Go (with eternal GPS via bluetooth), µSD, 2MP camera, etc. etc. Oh, and it's a phone, btw...
Please, remind me, why would I want to buy a one-trick pony with a b/w screen for 300 USD?

yogibimbi

@Eric C. Tucker: oh yeah! I forgot about that.

@Pope John Peeps II: Can't really argue with that, as another who makes plenty of notes and various irrelevant doodles on the side. Just the same, I do believe that's what the keypad on the kindle is (partly) there for.

Kaiser-Machead

That's a pretty sexy reader.

@Pope John Peeps II: or Sony's touchscreen :)

Eric C. Tucker

@Kaiser-Machead: As someone who's made thousands and thousands of notes in his academic life, there is no conceivable way anyone in his right mind would type any notes on a tiny, thumbs-only keyboard. It's simply not functional. Anyone who really needs to make a note will simply write it somewhere else with a pen and paper.

The QWERTY keyboard will simply never be used for that. If you still wanted to order, that could be achieved easily with a trackball or touchpad and an electronic keyboard.

@craighyatt: At some point the only difference between all of these portable media gadgets will be form factor.

dingus

I have a feeling that these low-power readers are evolving into network appliances. Not sure whether they will eventually have color screens (I mean, some kind of color E-ink, not TFT). I think there's space in the market place for a small, light-weight nano-power device with network connectivity. Maybe there will be convergence with netbooks approaching the size of e-books and having an auxillary E-ink screen for relatively static content and OLED or some other tech for movies and games. I can even see the possibility of merging a static (i.e. super low power, no refresh) and dynamic display technology into one device. I think many users would pay a few hundred bucks for a device like that... I mean, if we can imagine an e-book on steroids with color, network connectivity, a "high power" mode for dynamic display update and "flea power" mode for static display and playing music.

@Chewbenator: I found out that yelling at the Kindle if you want to make notes doesn't quite work. Amazon confirmed this after a very long painful (and ultimately humiliating) phone call.

Kaiser-Machead

@nightwheel: Sounds like you need a pad computer. Just wait a little while and you will be appeased.

reddingofish

@Chewbenator: Without the keyboard and the Wi-Fi connection, how could they possibly charge you between 3 and 4 hundred dollars?

I mean.. coooooome on. These people have to eat too. they have children. If they were to make a bargain ereader at a sensible price then where would the capitalism be? Where would the hope for the future be? What would Jesus think of your keyboard-less reader. He would be ashamed. ASHAMED.

Some one make a E-Book reader already that I can surf the web decently, get apps, and have flash video support

nightwheel

I still don't understand why you need a QWERTY keyboard for an e-book.