On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Robert Sutherland wrote:

Just to bring my enquiry of 8 June 05 uptodate, I continued my email/online enquiries as far as I could, but found no product among the DVD portable readers that would deal with text, nor was any of the manufacturers interested in producing one. Apart from the French reader Cybook (which I think is too expensive for the task and market although otherwise for the most part ideal) there seems still to be no special ebook reading device available in UK or the EU generally: laptops are still too big and heavy,

Don't they have "notebook" computers that weigh hardly more than books?

and PDAs still have far too small a screen

I've seen products such as Blackberrys and Treos that seem to have screens at least twice as large as most PDAs, perhaps one of those would be better.

My enquiries confirmed my strong impression that there are protectionist interests holding this back, presumably in the interests of proprietary issues of ebooks.

Yes, it is all too obvious that virtually all the multibillion dollar participants, from Google to Yahoo to Amazon to HarperCollins, and even to The Library of Congress, do not seem to have "easy access" in mind, but that is merely because they have no concept other than traditional "business plans." I think that just as Google came up with a different kind of business plan based on a free product, that others will do so with free eBooks, or eBooks so inexpensive that no one will worry about the cost.

That is really rather to bury the head in the sand, especially now that Google are to set up their Library - if PG and Google are going to be fully useful a new device is inevitable. Can PG and Google not take a hand themselves to enable production of something they undoubtedly will need?

Need? But first, I can't put Google and PG in the same group for several reasons. Google is worth over $100 billion, PG is barely worth an account sheet. Google, after 13 months of high visibility press releases still has not taken over more than a few percent of the eBook marketplace, and I still haven't seen anything new from Yahoo, Amazon, HarperCollins, or even The Library of Congress that makes me think they will be responsible for a million eBooks between the lot of them before a million eBooks are made simply and easily available by people beneath their radar. Back to need. . . . Of course, iPods and cellphones don't have large screens, but that didn't stop people from reading eBooks on them, and even Apple has to admit that they are selling 10 times as many iPods as computers. 1.25 million Apple computers sold in the last quarter. 14 million iPods. But that barely scratches the surface of cellphone sales which are in the range of 1 billion per year and only 100 million computers. People are going to use what they have. I just don't see a market for that dedicated eBook reader we have heard talk about for ever so long, particularly at prices we must say are equal to that of a cheap computer and usually filled with stuff to keep us from doing much with free eBooks. Michael