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Amazon Kindle 2 Leaked, Sony Reader To Get Touch Screen
suraj.sun writes with news that the e-book reader market is getting more competitive. The Boy Genius Report got its hands on pictures of the Kindle 2, successor to Amazon's first e-book gadget. The new version is a bit bigger, with edges that are less awkward, and it has a revamped key layout. On the same day these pictures were found, Sony announced that a new model of its Reader would be getting a touchscreen, allowing users to "turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen" and "annotate text using a touchscreen keyboard." The advances for each gadget may help them regain market share against the iPhone, which, according to Forbes, has eclipsed both in popularity as a reading device. Hopefully the competition for sales and the work being done by the OLPC Project will help to drop prices as well.
Wouldn't a scrollwheel be better than a joystick for the purpose of this reader?
I had been considering purchasing one, now I wonder if I should hurry up and buy v1 before the new one comes out.
"turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen"
Only appeals to those whose laptop screens are encrusted with fingerprints. Ugh. Gross. I'm also not impressed with cellphones that accumulate a "face-print" on their LCDs.
Yet another product that looks great until actually used. I'm sure the focus group loved it.
Perhaps the target market is those folks whom still run their finger along underneath the words?
It's like promoting the "quality" of HDTV to nation where 90% of sets have 1/4 inch of dust and pet hair and badly maladjusted picture controls.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
popular if they had any decent books in their store or actually supported non-windows platforms. You would think that in the face of the growing popularity of the mac and the heavy competetion they are facing that Sony would try to expand it's potential audience, but we all know modern Sony rarely displays anything that could be considered logic...
Monstar L
Thing is, with a cell phone you only need the screen for a few seconds, you won't be trying to read text with no backlight for hours and cursing every single page turn.
Still, it'll look cool in the marketing videos and that's what counts.
No sig today...
They're single-purpose devices with closed formats in an increasingly multipurpose open-format world. Why would anyone in their right mind spend about $400 on a device that is locked to proprietary formats and doesn't do much else except "read books." Just one more [expletives deleted] gadget to carry around.
On the other hand, smart phones like the iPod and Android, which can also presumably serve as schedulers, notepads, book readers, mp3 players/audiobook players and *gasp* phones?
Kindle and Sony were effectively obsolete the day they were released.
It's still not clear to me why precisely I want a hardware keyboard in my ebook reader. There just aren't a lot of reasons to interact with an ebook reader that can't be done with a couple arrow buttons.
Frankly, the Kindle looks like a bargain-basement product, with an upper-tier price. Yes I know most of the cost is in the screen, I just wish it didn't look like crap. Also, open formats would be nice...