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With an 8 GB memory stick.

Me : "Well, I have more than 20,000 titles here. I'd be happy to list them all for you. There's 'Het Geheimzinnige Eiland', by Jules Verne (#22580), 'Bread Overhead', by Fritz Reuter Leiber (#22579), ...

(hours and hours later...)

... Kennedy's Inaugural Address (#3), The Bill of Rights (#2), and the Declaration of Independence (#1)."

Agent : "Is that all?"

Me : "Yup! Oh, and 'The Catcher in the Rye'."

Agent : "One of those, are you? Take him in, boys!"

Or you could use a Sony Reader, too...

A future generation of this perhaps?

http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/loca tionfreetv/index.html

Actually, I had a two-week contract in 2005 as a lead QA tester to test English-language content on the Japanese prototype that became the Sony Reader. :)

There are two commercial black & white e-paper devices available to my knowledge. I happen to have one.
The iRex iLiad http://www.irextechnologies.com/ is the one I have, but Sony also makes one http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/read er/

The quality of these b&w displays is phenomenal. The difference with colour or b&w LCDs is striking, especially outside and in full sunlight.

One reason they're not so popular might be that E-Ink is prohibitely expensive; they have a monopoly on the digital ink liquid.
Also a lot of people tend to think colour is very important, neglecting the fact that 99.9% of their book library is monochrome.

The Sony Reader has the type of screen you want, which is an eInk technology. I don't know when color will be generally available, but they do have prototype color displays now.

I've been looking for a useful device in this space. Each one I've seen obviously has to make tradeoffs around battery life, screen size, keyboard size, and processor speed, and it's hard to compare one device to another based on features when it's really a question of whether one device achieves a better balance of tradeoffs than another.

That said, anyone interested in this space might want to take a look at the following devices:

- Sony Vaio UX series (official site w/ too much flash)
- Nokia N800 internet tablet (official site, user forums)
- OQO 02 (official site)
- Sony Mylo (my review, official site)

Short summary: the Mylo is possibly the best handheld Skype phone on the market and comes with Google Talk as well and has great UI and case design, but is expensive and has a poor keyboard. The Nokia N800 has fantastic battery life and a great browser that can handle nearly any website except Youtube, and also has a Nokia-supported very active open source development community - the device runs Debian, but lacks a keyboard and ships with apps that are too rough for non-geek end-users. The OQO 02 is a complete laptop with the best keyboard of the bunch and a lot of nice hardware UI touches, but isn't shipping until April, is expensive, and has fairly short battery life. The Vaio UX series has the best display and most processor power of the bunch, but is a little too large for comfort and has a terrible keyboard - the worst of the lot).

For my purposes, the OQO 02 has the best balance of features and tradeoffs, but I could have chosen the Nokia N800 if I wanted a maximally hackable portable computer.

--Pat

I've been looking for a useful device in this space. Each one I've seen obviously has to make tradeoffs around battery life, screen size, keyboard size, and processor speed, and it's hard to compare one device to another based on features when it's really a question of whether one device achieves a better balance of tradeoffs than another.

That said, anyone interested in this space might want to take a look at the following devices:

- Sony Vaio UX series (official site w/ too much flash)
- Nokia N800 internet tablet (official site, user forums)
- OQO 02 (official site)
- Sony Mylo (my review, official site)

Short summary: the Mylo is possibly the best handheld Skype phone on the market and comes with Google Talk as well and has great UI and case design, but is expensive and has a poor keyboard. The Nokia N800 has fantastic battery life and a great browser that can handle nearly any website except Youtube, and also has a Nokia-supported very active open source development community - the device runs Debian, but lacks a keyboard and ships with apps that are too rough for non-geek end-users. The OQO 02 is a complete laptop with the best keyboard of the bunch and a lot of nice hardware UI touches, but isn't shipping until April, is expensive, and has fairly short battery life. The Vaio UX series has the best display and most processor power of the bunch, but is a little too large for comfort and has a terrible keyboard - the worst of the lot).

For my purposes, the OQO 02 has the best balance of features and tradeoffs, but I could have chosen the Nokia N800 if I wanted a maximally hackable portable computer.

--Pat

Until there is decent hardware to read books on, projects like this aren't going anywhere beyond niche markets.

I love books, I own a few thousand of them and buy new ones every few months. I don't own a single ebook and I doubt I ever will because I've yet to see an ebook reader that was superior to an actual book. The only benefit to ebook readers over physical books are portability and storage capacity. The problem with this is that neither of these are big problems with physical books - if I'm going on a long trip it's not a big deal to bring even a few full sized hardbacks along to read. I don't need to have a library of books on my person at any time, the most books I've ever needed to bring with me anywhere at one time (since high school) was 4, and that was to read on a flight to the other side of the planet. I don't often fly to the other side of the planet.

Well I used to feel much the same way: I abstained from buying any of the earlier ebook readers and would never ever even consider really trying to read anything on a PDA/laptop/etc, but the new eInk devices work pretty well. I've got the new Sony eBook Reader and I'm quite happy with it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to throw out books just yet (and I read at least 2 books a week on average), but it's definitely getting close. I'd give it another few more years to start gaining real mainstream traction.

Legibility is perfectly good, imho, comparable to a decent paperback. I've read about 20 novels on this thing since I purchased it and I haven't had any problems.

What it's lacking right now is:

1) Equally good online selection & equivalent prices (though improved since Nov?) -- there is a small premium on most things (esp. considering I can't readily share it with friends/family), though frankly I don't mind it that much (being able to get what I want now is kinda nice... kind of like iTunes is to Ipod ... only not quite as slick).

2) Better firmware. Stupid quirks, which are perfectly fixable, exist in the software. For instance, if I walk away from the book and brush it against something, it'll cause the pages to skip forwards or backwards by some large number... there's no easy way to simply return to where I left off unless I vigilently bookmarked every several pages as I read (and this compounded by 2 second refresh time for flipping through--doesn't matter when you read, but it does when you want to flip through something quickly). A few lines of code could fix this #$@$

3) Some small form factor changes. The buttons are in kind of a wierd place.

4) Battery life could use some improvement. I may be alone in this, but I've only been able to get 2-3 novels per charge or about 1.5K pages. This is about 1/2 or 1/3 the number they quoted. Not a show stopper, but it'd help its long term ability to replace books.

5) An integrated backlight/frontlight would be nice... a real advantage over paperbacks, though I guess Sony chose not to for marketing reasons.

Overall, I find it's very nice to have though. I do like not having to carry several books with me when I travel (especially hardbacks -- I'd PAY the same price softback just for the privledge of not having to deal with them). I often find myself needing to carry more than 4 books and even that is a pain for me since I like to travel light (avoid checking bags in almost all of my trips). It's also nice being able to copy text files, PDFs and such to it for review. I don't often find myself wanting to read stuff that is in the public domain stuff, but it could save you real money if you do. This is where I see eBooks really gaining a foothold in the short run -- applications where commercial printed books simply aren't available (e.g, more nice/obscure works, personal papers, public domain stuff, etc). I also envision niche markets sprouting up precisely because of this technolog

seems to be what you're looking for.

The sound quality issue isn't FUD; ATRAC (in its latest incarnations) is simply a better compression algorithm for audio quality (at comparable file sizes); see here or here for example. Now, I'm not saying you couldn't produce an MP3 which sounds better than ATRAC, but in common usage, ATRAC generally has more fidelity. Saying that, I'm sure as MD drops off as a format and MP3 becomes even more mainstream, MP3 will improve to the point that it overtakes ATRAC - and it's not a huge difference at the moment. But it's big enough for me - I didn't spend money on a decent hifi to waste my time listening to poorly compressed music on it. They're both compromises, but at the moment, in practical usage, ATRAC is less of a compromise than MP3.

A DVD player which plays MP3s is not an "MP3 player" - you'd have to use a computer to burn a CD/DVD specifically for listening on it. This is not the same as having one MD which I can use in a portable player or a deck. How many people do you know who keep their MP3 player contents sync'd with CDs ? If I'm listening to music while walking home, then decide I want to carry on listening to the same music, but on my hifi, I can simply take the disc out of my MD player, put it in my deck, and i'm done. With a computer based format like MP3 I'd need to burn it to a new medium first. Again, a computer is required. I spend all day in front of a computer - when I'm relaxing, listening to music, I don't mind using a cd player, but having to use a computer is an intermediate step i don't want.

Of course, with some portables you get a line-out which means you can plug it into your amp and listen direct from there, but not many come with a line-in which you can record via without using a computer. that's fine for many people, who want to use it via a computer. I don't.

And my MD portable IS a sony - an MZ-E909, at 71.1 x 77.6 x 12.5 mm (2cm smaller in height but 3cm wider, and about 5mm deeper - not that much difference - they both slip into a pocket easily). For that I get around 40 hours battery life (and more like 100 hours if i don't mind one AA battery piggybacking) - a nano gives about 14 hours. The build quality is also much better, IMO (magnesium shell - dropped many times with no ill effects, and even sat on a couple of times). So i get a slightly squarer, slightly thicker body, but only have to charge it every few weeks rather than every few days. Again, not a big deal, but it suits me.

I'm not saying MD/ATRAC is better than MP3 in all it's forms, it isn't - I'm just saying that it isn't quite the dead duck some people would have you believe - at least not in technical terms. For me, it's a great format, let down only by Sony's refusal to make it more mainstream. MP3 on MD could have been huge, if Sony had not been so dense a few years ago. Now anyone who hasn't already invested in the format would be mad to buy into it.

Of course it may just be other companies jumping on the bandwagon but I'm afraid to say that some Sony's latest Vaio laptops offerings are far "sexier" and/or "cuter" (I feel ill just typing that) than the Intel/Mac MacBook Pro's.

It's the SW that sets them apart. Even I'll agree that XP is still pretty ugly nad not very clean. Having said that I can't get my head round the Mac interface either... Now, where's BASH gone ;-D

I mean... this
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/images/6469_large .jpg
vs this
http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/images/article/N otebooks/FJSeries/img_features_screen.jpg

Do people (real people that is not hackers & geeks) even care about CPU's these days?

AFAICT, SXRD isn't replacing Qualia - SXRD is one of the technologies used in Qualia. http://www.qualia.sony.us/qualia_main.cgi