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New Sony E-Book Device To Debut This Year
Luke PiWalker writes "Sony hopes to pen a new chapter for e-books with a device set to debut later this year. The secret? A display based on E Ink technology that goes miles beyond LCDs and CRTs. From the article: 'Scheduled to go on sale this spring for between $300 and $400, the Reader is a compact slab about the size of a small paperback book (5-by-7 inches, and a half-inch thick). But it's the 3.5-by-4.8-inch display that made it the buzz of the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month in Las Vegas.'"
No more Sony in my house, sorry.
While this sounds like a cool gizmo it's strange that they shut down their zire operation, which had some success, and are going in a pretty much unproven direction like this which will likely not do much in retail.
Sony may have a good marketing machine, but I make a note to always stay way clear of them.
* Sony products are usually 20% more expensive, with *less* features than the competitors.
* Sony products adhere strictly to DVD Region coding: corrupt racketeering of the DVD distribution.
* Sony products are simply not as competitive as other products.
* Sony products are slow to move to the marketplace, MP3 players were the most amusing addition to their product line, almost 4 years after the ipod.
Everytime I see some fashion crazy gumby tell me they just bought the top of the line Sony TV I sit back and have a quiet chuckle. They just spent 20% more than they needed too, and with probably only 50% of the features found in other leading products.
I want one too, but only if it can read HTML.
If it can't access Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ or the Baen free library (and subscriptions) http://www.baen.com/library/, well, what use is it?
But wouldn't RSS imply the ability to display HTML as well?
Oh, come on. Let Sony blaze the way, throwing all their money behind it and bringing the cost of the materials down. They'll screw it up in a dozen ways for sure, but that'll just help out the company who eventually sends the better version down the line.
Say, why does the 1 laptop per child $100 laptop only cost $100 and it's got one of these cool, cutting edge screens? Didn't MIT "invent" this e-ink? Is there expensive licensing involved? Is Sony maybe helping to bankroll the 1LPC program with this device? I could probably search and find my answers, but one of you already knows.
Although the new technology is attractive, the technology in the Rocket eBook or the Franklin eBookman was more than adequate. I still have my five-year-old Rocket and I still use it. I can bring ten books on a trip in a device that's smaller and lighter than a trade paperback and have a pleasurable, immersive reading experience.
What has prevented the eBook from taking off--killed it, at least for the moment--is not the devices. It is, in order of importance: limited title availability, limited title availability, limited title availability, excessive price, and DRM. Fix those problems and the eBook market will take off, even if you have to read them on a cell phone screen.
Of these, title availability is the most serious. At one point I checked, and at that time, of about 44 books on Oprah's Book Club list, something like 35 of them were available as audiobooks... and something like six of them were available as ebooks in ANY format. And no more than about four of them in any specific format.
TFA is entitled "Screening the Latest Bestseller," but unless something changes drastically, only a small fraction of the latest bestsellers will be screenable. Maybe you don't care for Barbara Kingsolver but I do, and none of her books has ever been available as an eBook.
Price. I've had about half-a-dozen conversations with strangers who saw me using my Rocket. They would be interested, I'd hand it to them so they could scroll pages, they'd be impressed, they'd ask about price and capacity and so forth. Then would come the question: "How much do the eBooks cost?" I'd answer "About the same as a hardbound for books that are not out in paper, about the same as a paperback for books that are in paperback." They'd give me a you-gotta-be-kidding look of disbelief and that would be that. End of story.
And, DRM. Look guys, don't you get it? One of the pleasures of books is lending them. Why do you think bookplates were invented? If I can't lend my son the latest Stephen King, don't bother. True story: just last year, my wife bought a copy of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." "Wow, this is really good," she says. "You'd probably like to read it when I'm done with it." Pregnant pause. "Uh, honey... I'm afraid I've already read it. I bought it for my Rocket eBook a couple of years ago." Phooey. Paid twice for the damn book. Not that it would have mattered, as my wife doesn't own a Rocket eBook, and even if she did the content was keyed to the serial number of the individual device and I couldn't have loaned it to her anyway.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A half an inch thick E-ink based gadget? What are they thinking? The whole point with the E-ink is that it can be on a flexible super thin piece of plastic. All Sony is doing...is making an inferior PDA like gadget with a worse screen, sure - it will save batteries... but then again - so will an black and grey Palm-pilot without backlight too. Pointless stuff.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
When they make things digitally restricted and quite literally "locked up in crypto bottles" (John Perry Barlow), the fallout (especially among all the tech-savvy that should be the earliest adopters at premium prices) tends to be the one that can be seen from the start of this discussion: an immediate association with practices perceived as "evil" (why would any company in their right mind want to match Microsoft on this one?!) that only billions in advertising (if anything) can make go away again...
Once they do get over their impulse to restrict and restrain, however, and simply sell the customer what the customer wants (cf. reprogrammable Aibos, MP3/4-capable players - and remember when everyone wanted a "Walkman(TM)"?), volume, clever additional applications, and the power of a premium brand more than make up for anything DRM (and lawsuits against tinkerers) could ever have earned them - and this improves rather than taints the image they enjoy in the public eye.
I've personally been boycotting the music industry ever since Napster (the real one, not the new one that stole the name) shut down. Not just Sony, but all of them. Except indy's. And no iTunes store either (because of DRM). I haven't been 100%. I mean, I've bought 5 or 6 CDs over that time. Overall that's a huge drop in my music purchasing, and besides I'm only human.
I did pretty well until I discovered allofmp3.com. Now I can buy music in open formats at a better than reasonable price. Allofmp3.com is my "good faith" way of showing that if someone offers a product I'm interested in (music downloads that will play wherever *I* want to play them, without restriction) I'm willing to buy. I think that's a much better statement than simply boycotting.
But I back this sony boycott for sure. They attacked their cusomters. In the name of "anti-piracy" they put stuff on their CDs that *only* attacked their PAYING CUSTOMERS' machines.
Did it infect the computers of people trading ColdPlay music on Kazaa? No.
Did it infect the computers of people mass-producing bootleg CDs? No
Did it infect the people who bought the bootlegs? Not likely, unless the bootlegs were copies of the original infected CD... if its a rip/burn, its safe...
Only the people who forked over $12 or $15 or whatever got screwed by this. Anyone who didn't *legally* buy ColdPlay is fine... Sony's rootkit helps "keep honest users" get fucked.
So yeah, I'll boycott their entire company as best as I can. If we only boycotted their music dept, the remaining divisions will cover for them. Sony's strength is in their diversity. The only way to make an impact is to stop giving them your money across the board. Maybe I can't special order a motherboard with no Sony capacitors on it, but I can definitely stop buying high-margin Sony items (ie, everthing Sony sells directly to consumers).
(and actually, I'm not sure I've even seen a sony semiconductor recently...)
You think maybe the "overhead projector group" might get a little annoyed if their quarterly revenue drops because the music group's anti-consumer practices? Maybe that could affect change from the inside, too.
Just for kicks, let's see how well I'm doing by your standards.
- haven't seen Memoirs of a Geisha. In fact I haven't seen many new movies this year, as most have gotten terrible reviews, and the few I have seen were so bad that they've really turned me off from going to the theater. I'll admit that this wasn't a conscious sony-boycott measure... I just didn't go see it.
- DaVinci Code - I probably won't see DVC, since it has Tom Hanks in it, and I'm still boycotting him until he gets over himself and does another "Bachelor Party" type comedy (my last tom hanks movie: forest gump). Besides, I read the book and the movie will likely be a crappy adaptation.
- Spiderman 3... you might have me on that one. But again, i'm only human.
- Hellboy 2 - I might see this one... in Hell. The first Hellboy was bad enough. I won't have a problem boycotting this one.
- Peer pressure - If my friends invite me to see a movie that I don't want to go see, I'll pass. If its a Sony movie (even one that I wouldn't have wanted to see regardless of the studio), I'll tell them its because I'm boycotting Sony. They'll laugh and understand. They're my friends.
If your friends consider shitty movies more important than your integrity, you should find new friends.
- Tom & Jerry SG-1 - haven't seen either in a long ass time. In fact I haven't seen but maybe 1/2 an episode of SG-1 ever. I saw the movie, but not the TV show. Through no fault of my own this boycott is a cakewalk.
- I didn't buy a PSP, nor do I plan to. I *am* holding out for a Playstation 3, but Sony has another year or so to shape up before I have to worry about that. And maybe by then I'll have enough will power to not waste money on video game systems that I hardly ever play (I have PS2 and probably 10 gam
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