As an ePublisher, I’ve been asked my opinion (most recently in an interview for the AP earlier this week – not sure when it’s coming out) about the future of the format, and things like the new Amazon Kindle reader.
I’m not impressed. $400 bucks for black-and-white, and no PDF support? No thanks. I mean, sure, Amazon has got the push behind it, but I don’t see a lot of early-adopters. Not at that price, and not with those features.
I’ve decided, however, that I need one of these:
That’s an Arcos 605 wi-fi Portable Media Player. With one of those, I can read PDF documents….but I can also watch video, listen to mp3s, surf the web, and more…..on a full-color hi-def screen. It comes with up to 160 GB of storage, and is priced roughly compatably with an iPod.
The Kindle? Not so much.
Yeah, Arcos is pretty bad ass. A friend of mine got one (probably not the one you linked, this was a couple of years ago, just before iPod started video support) and was raving about it. He also set up a feed on his home system, so using the WiFi, he could access basically all of his media on his home computer (or at least all his music & podcasts) and didn’t have to worry about storage or updating the device with his latest media.
What e-ink does better than any LCD ever will is readability and battery life. There are some good, open-format e-ink-based e-books that are priced comparably to the Kindle, but it’ll be a while before it’s really affordable.
I find myself comparing:
http://laptop.org/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml
vs
http://www.archos.com/products/gen_5/archos_605fwifi/tech_specs.html?country=global&lang=en
-=-
How much does the Archos cost?
Tops out at 350 for the 160GB model.
That’s very spiffy. Any idea how Mac-compatible it is? I didn’t see anything right off about its computer interface.
Reviews I’ve read have said it’s Mac-compatible. It connects via USB (or wireless, for that matter.)
The eInk really does look amazing, even if it’s only black and white. And I love that it’s always connected via cell lines for free, and I like that they save a backup of your books.
But $400 for the privilege of only buying books from Amazon? Yeah. Notsomuch.
What I need is my iPod Touch to be slightly bigger with a larger hard drive and an actual SDK, so I can add on whatever third party apps I want to without bricking the thing. Rumor has it that Apple is working on answering my desire.