jon richfield said:

Some months ago BB intimidated me with dire descriptions of Kindle (or was it epaper in general?) slowness, contrast and resolution. 

ok, first of all, jon, any time you are "intimidated" by what i say, you can just push the "delete" button. and thus you will have vanquished (and vanished) the intimidation. with one finger. instantly! see how easy it can be? *** second of all, i'm quite sure i didn't give any "dire descriptions". because the truth of the matter is, e-ink is just fine for many people. you have to try it out, and see for yourself, whether the contrast and the resolution and the speed of the software works for you... or not... like i said, it's fine for some people. and not fine for other people. and nobody can tell you whether it'll be fine for you, except you... now, in terms of judging whether it's a useful technology or not, you have to listen to the people who actually own the technology, and most people who actually own the kindle love their machines. so hey, i'm happy for them... what i _probably_ said is that -- until the technology was out and actually being used by people -- we had no idea of its limitations. as the old saying goes, the only product that has no limitations is the one that hasn't been released yet. that's why it's so _stupid_ to go on and on about unreleased technology, because only a fool or an idiot would believe the hype and marketing of a press release. so one e-ink was released, we released that there were many areas in which it was suboptimal, and we hadn't been prepared for that. because before it was released, e-ink was a "magic" technology that had no flaws. it was going to be all perfect, and very inexpensive, and e-reader-machines were right around the corner, for just $50. this is the kind of bullshit in which you find yourself knee-deep when you start dealing with speculation instead of released tech. and when someone is flooding the e-book scene with this bullshit, we need to call them on it, and tell them clearly to stop doing that. -bowerbird