New E-Reader Planned
Thus far I’ve successfully resisted the charms of Kindles 1 and 2, such as they are, and of the Sony Reader as well. Though I’m someone who reads a whole lot of text on a screen, I’m still a committed bookist when it comes to, well, books.
It is possible that the promised Eee Reader from Asus might be a game changer for me. For one thing, as with the netbook that the Taiwan company launched, this device would be cheap — perhaps $200, according to reports. Then, as you can see from the image, which is an imagined portrayal, the plan is to market a hinged pair of screens so as to put something very like an actual pocket book in your hands. Moreover, unlike the current e-book readers, the Eee Reader would have the ability to operate on one of the screens as a netbook as well, using a touch screen keyboard.
PC World and the Times Online, among others, have stories on the interview the president of Asus gave to the Times, though there is nothing on the Asus website about the Reader that I could find.
That sounds interesting. I have resisted the netbook / e-reader so far too – but I am coming to the conclusion that I need one. If anyone cares, this is what I want: A touchscreen tablet running Windows 7 similar in size to a netbook. It needs some kind of keyboard for data entry – but perhaps a screen based one is good enough. Graphics performance sufficient to play video cleanly. At least 2 gig ram. Modest hard drive. Several hour battery life. DVD drive would be nice – but perhaps creates too much of a price/size/weight penalty. And priced under $300 (well, OK – maybe $400) Can.
I almost made the plunge for the Sony reader over the long weekend but am glad I resisted the temptation. My main issue is being “locked into” a particular manufacturer’s proprietary software that forces you into buying e-books from their online library (I realize most e-book readers do allow for unlimited public domain readings and the ability to read PDF and Word files, etc.). As well, the Sony or Kindle readers do seem like “one trick ponies” that do not do much more than allowing you to read. Color would seem to be an important feature to me.
As long as 5 or 6 years ago I was a huge fan of the Pocket PC, which I found to be a versatile PDA (that worked nicely with Microsoft Office products). I did try experimenting with e-books on the PC but found the screen too small to be practical. The Asus model looks promising.