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

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Never solve a problem with hardware when software can do it.

By which I mean, my netbook, on which I am typing this, cost $450. It can read PDFs, e-documents, and Word files. It can hook up to Wi-Fi wherever it goes, and Wi-fi is getting cheaper. It can run any software I choose. 3 pounds, 10.2" screen. Its successors will be lighter, more powerful, and probably thinner. There's enormous competition in this market driving it to be cheap.

This generation of Kindle still has a niche market. However, the price curve on actual laptop PCs is headed through the floor, and smart software developers can provide more features than Amazon currently does.

We'll see. I'm betting the Ebook will ultimately be specialized software running on an ultraportable notebook that meets all your software/cloud computing needs. I think Amazon's DRM-based model is too late to the market. Apple got several good years out of DRM but ultimately had to go unprotected. I'm betting that the book market is good enough that the same will happen. (Note that Google Books is now offering the ability to read books online from their enormous database for pay, the money to be split with the copyright holder, and is hinting at offline access to come. They already have books specially formatted for the Android and iPhone, and out-of-copyright books are free.

With the smartphones chewing up from the bottom and the netbooks chewing down from the top, I don't see the Kindle or its revenue model lasting more than 5 years.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That would be wonderful, if and when I can fit a laptop in my pocket. This is why the current fad for netbooks baffles me, they aren't pocket-sized. OTOH, the new MIDs are looking promising - if they boost the battery life a lot (epaper or OLED screens will help lots) I'm sold.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to fit a paperback in my pocket since the '70s -- too thick. The current Netbook is about the size of a trade paperback.

But for small size, you won't beat a smartphone --- see comment about chewing up from the bottom.

[avram]

This is why the current fad for netbooks baffles me, they aren't pocket-sized.

But they're man-purse-sized, which is good enough for a lot of people. And cheap. I could buy a whole netbook for less than it would cost me to get the screen on my PowerBook repaired if it broke.

Actually, the smaller Asus EEEs can fit in a biggish jacket pocket. I saw someone pull one out at Worldcon last year.