Color ebook reader for 200 clams? Yup There's a new Android-based e-reader on the block that's set to challenge the Kindle, iPad, Nook et al in price, features, and display quality. For "display quality", read "color". Pandigital, a San Francisco Bay Area company known for its digital photo frames, has announced the Novel, a combo video/web/email/music/e-reader …
"Also, the Novel can switch between portrait and landscape mode, a trick of which neither the Kindle nor the Nook are capable."
Actually the Kindle can switch to landscape.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/5091/kindle-2-how-to-switch-between-portrait-and-landscape-modes/
Came in with an over-the-air software update about six months ago.
I don't think I've been so unimpressed for a long time. Well not since I last looked at an e-reader. I can get a much better (screenwise higher res -smaller but then half a page is enough) netbook from argos clearance and with 160G hard drive and longer battery life for less. And its so much more useful - try reading an e-reader in bed - you really want something that folds in half...
Oh and it works as a computer as well...
If that's the best it can do it's still a bit of an insult to all the ebookreaders Out There, except including itself. Does it support PostScript? It's got the cpu for it. Does it support DJVU? That, next to PDF, is so far the only thing that makes the paperless office transition halfway viable.
b/g/n? Very annoying. Talk a/b/g and it gets interesting. Talk a/b/g/n and it gets useful. The 2.4GHz band is full enough already for n to be merely the device to annoy everyone else, not a useful innovation. The 5GHz band, OTOH, is a sea of emptyness by comparison.
And yes, battery life. It can weigh as much as half a tome for all I care, as long as it doesn't give up on me when I'm halfway war and peace or something even more obnoxiously long (fantasy, anyone?).
just wipe Android and replace with a decent pad optimised Linux...
I've been looking for a decently priced replacement for my palm organiser... this looks like it will fit the bill nicely... even better if the display back-light can be switched off and it still be readable in sunlight...
sadly, it'll probably be at least next year when we see it over here in Blighty and it'll be £250 as well...
*Yawn*
This is just another..whatever the name for a netbook in tablet form is. Tabbook?
This excites me even less than the Kindle.
Colour eInk is when eReaders will take off. And possible save the magazine/newspaper industry. Who wants to read a magazine in monochrome? Even technical manuals sometimes have colour diagrams.
A better screen (not fussed about response time, but daylight reading is a must), and - the biggie - a longer battery life and it would be the best so far.
I like the fact that at 7 inches I can probably slip it into my pocket during my commute.
I would also like to know that it can play music at the same time as reading.
ttfn
My trusty Sony 505 runs for 3-4 weeks! That's using it two and a half hours a day on my commute. It was great on a 10 day trip to Florida. Didn't have to worry about carrying a charger and adapter.
Six hours for an eBook reader is not good enough. Six hours is pushing it even if you call it an iPad type device rather than an eBook reader. I guess that's Android for you.
"The whole shebang weighs one pound (0.45kg), and Pandigital claims that battery life is up to six hours when reading."
6 hours? no thanks. Last thing I want is "Elementary dear Watson! it was the- LOW BATTERY!!"
I'm still not sold on the kindle et al, but this really really doesn't appeal to me.
Conversely, most of the cost of e-paper display devices, is the e-paper display. You pays your money...
The novel CYBERBOOKS may be an interesting read. It's mainly a satire on the publishing and bookstore business, with sexy parts (it's fiction, actually science fiction or fantasy). A poor inventor devises a Cyberbook portable e-book reader with colour, motion and sound - in a world where no other portable electronic media devices exist, evidently - and offers it to a publisher. Short version, the rest of the dead-tree industry revolts, like in THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, but there's a twist.
In the real world, we got PCs, laptops, PDAs, Project Gutenberg, e-book stores, Amazon, Kindle... I think Amazon stomped on the same people already that the Cyberbook product would stomp on, so those people weren't there to complain about Kindle.
Geez guys, pretty demanding. This isn't earth shattering, but really.. you could buy 2 of these for the price of the ipad, with cash left over; or spend more to get a black-and-white reader. It's nice to have less expensive competition. The battery life sounds pretty bad, but presumably since it's that long reading that means with the backlight on and all that.
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