A personal jet-pack for the 21st century

[james_davis_nicoll]

Shorter John Siracusa: e-books' coming domination of publishing is inevitable, do you hear me? Inevitable!

Nicked from Charles Stross, who pretty much would have to be more positive about e-books than I am.

Comments

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I'll be happy to get an e-book reader when it has the following characteristics:

1. The size of a paperback book, so I can shove it into my pocket.
2. Simple page access- as simple as flipping pages to the right spot.
3. Complete wireless connectivity
4. Ability to play movies and music
5. Phone connection and Bluetooth
6. All the secondary functions of a PDA or Blackberry.
7. Ability to read and write PDF files, wit the books of course being
in PDF format.
8. Complete web connectivity.

In other words, why the hell should I pay the money for a dedicated device, when I should be able to get all the functions I want. I'll be reasonable- I'll pass on the ability to squirt perfumed water at people, though a reasonably smart AI would be nice.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

HTC Mogul phone (mine's from Sprint) completely meets your list. I imagine many others do as well, notably the iPhone.

Though in fact I hate the contact and calendar apps, and don't use them.

I avoid books in PDF format, though; the readers for other formats are far better. My preference is HTML or RTF.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Acrobat is great as a reader on a TabletPC, if the content is sensibly sized. Full-screen mode, single button to flip pages back and forward, and clean attractive display.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That's kind of the whole point -- for text-stream reading, I really REALLY don't want to be tied to a page size, especially not a large page size. Hence, PDF is a disaster for ebook reading for me. I want a device I can carry with me easily (with many books in it, to cover unexpected reading time). I want a device I can ready comfortably while reading. Both of these argue for smaller-than-paperback devices. I don't care about the small screen -- turning pages on everything I've used is much faster and easier than on paper, so it doesn't bother me at all.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind, I want something at least as large as a paperback, so I can read a page worth of text in the correct font size.

I alsowant Boom Tube capability, but I think that's a bit beyond the technology.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Okay, the HTC is smaller than a paperback.

Is this a theoretical requirement, or based on bad experience trying to read on real devices? For me, I find the smaller screen works fine, because "turning the page" is much easier and quicker; hence having to do it more often doesn't bother me (and I get a corresponding win from having a more convenient device size). (Font size is adjustable in the various software I've used; I end up picking smaller than paperback size, because the screen is self-lighting and much sharper than paperback printing.)

[mgedmin.livejournal.com]

Nokia N810 Internet Tablet only fails at 6 (no bundled PDA functionality, although there are some 3rd party apps I haven't tried) and 7 (no ability to write PDF files).

I have yet to see something better for book reading, (and I include paper books among the not-as-good alternatives).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

It fails at being a phone, also.

I've got an N800, and it's a great screen, though the aspect ratio isn't right for very much. But I've never quite managed to move from my Palm TX to my N800 + HTC Mogul phone (offering bluetooth internet connectivity) because of PDA issues; no contact manager anywhere in the mix I can stand except on the Palm, and no decent calendar anywhere. The calendar problem may be solved by Google calendar and phone-based web connectivity.

[mgedmin.livejournal.com]

Well, being a phone was not on roseembolism's spec, was it? I interpreted "5. Phone connection and Bluetooth" as being able to get online via Bluetooth dialup to a 3G/EDGE/GPRS phone, which the N8x0 does just fine.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Ah, that could be what was meant.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my Samsung Q1 UMPC is a near-miss on almost all the categories.

1. It's slightly smaller than a trade paperback.
2. It's a touch screen, so if the reader software supports quick jump and flip it can too.
3. Wi-fi and Bluetooth, plus its USB ports can support 3G modems.
4. Excellent media play, in widescreen and with Dolby support.
5. No telephony support at all, so it fails completely here.
6. It supports Office, as it's running Windows XP.
7. As it's running XP, writing PDF is easily supported.
8. As it's running XP, you have your choice of browsers.

Alas, it also runs afoul of the problem of price (near a grand, at least) and that it's out of production.

-- Steve got beguiled by the idea of a sub-kilogram laptop three years ago and shelled out... alas, the UMPC concept didn't spread too far and ended up mutating into the netbook.

[kayshapero]

I have that - it's my PDA. :) (Ok, Docs to go is still not too great with pdfs, but I avoid pdfs anyway. They're great for sending the final form of the document to other computers solely for printout. Anything else, there are much better formats to use.)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The Ipod Touch is a bit small, but the better ebook readers on it do all of this, and the Iphone also has the phone part.