On Fri, 27 Nov 2009, Walter van Holst wrote:
David H. Rothman schreef:
And, yes, thanks to Pixel Qi and E Ink, some interesting possibilities are ahead to reduce hardware prices and sharpen the view. Exactly when will these good things happen? As I've said before, who's to say for sure precisely when? But we should be looking ahead to the time when e-book technology is going to get much better.
Not anywhere near the $50 (which won't buy you a good diner over here anymore), but I've seen Cool-ER's in mainstream electronics stores for under 300 Euro nowadays. When I got my iRex iLiad a few years ago, you could only get it at a specific bookstore chain, not mention at a somewhat different price point. To me this means that e-readers are becoming 'normal'.
I don't consider it "normal" when someone pays 300 euros for a dedicated eBook gizmo at the same time I pay 275 dollars for a full Windows netbook. Actually, given that this was "Black Friday" in the US., I saw a name brand of 10" netbook, 8 hour battery, 160G hard drive, wifi, ports, etc., for $229, the thing was even cheaper over the counter at the store than online. Go figure. Other places were offering similar netbooks for $99 if you signed up for stuff via two contracts, but I never recommend that, nor do I usually mention brand. I still don't understand why anyone would pay so much for "dedicated hardware" when the full featured computers are even less money. I could understand in certain very specific cases when a professional writer's preference for a certain keyboard might be involved, someone who spends months or years working on a novel or the like that should make millions, but I think we are talking a bit more mainstream here. I just can't see a world where people are walking about with dedicated readers the same way they walk around with iPods, and I also notice that iPods will be more and more full functioned as the generations progress. The iPod and iPhone will become full tilt computers long before the world will turn to dedicated ereaders, except for specific situations. mh