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.'"

Comments

But will it come with a rootkit?

[Anonymous Coward]

No more Sony in my house, sorry.

Re:But will it come with a rootkit?

[TractorBarry]

I heartily concur.

Their root kit fiasco really was the last straw. Over the last years their entire raison d'etre seems to be to lock you into their products. Mainly by using their own crappy, non standard, proprietary formats (minidisc... atrac... memory stick etc. etc.) whilst staunchly refusng to support any sort of standard format.

Every time something appears on the market Sony makes something slightly different which is incompatible with everything else. But then they pulled the root kit trick and tried to start owning peoples Windows based computers like some 13 year old wannabe "crackers".

What are they going to do next ? start DDOSing competitors websites ? start writing XBox viruses ? Nothing this bunch of low life scumbags do will suprise me.

So I say to Sony the corporation. Fuck You. Go crawl in a hole and die.

I'll never buy another thing from them as long as I live.

Re:I want one...

[Jens Egon]

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?

Spare me the eBook technology stories

[dpbsmith]

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.