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Jumbo Dual-Screen "Kno" Tablet Debuts At D8
itwbennett writes "The Microsoft Courier may be a dead project, but that doesn't mean you can't still have a dual-touchscreen e-reader. And a super-sized one at that, says blogger Peter Smith. The Kno, which debuted at All Things Digital's D8 conference yesterday has 'two 14.1-inch (1440 x 900) capacitive touch screens. Each screen has its own battery, giving the Kno 8-hours of battery life, but a hefty weight of 5.5 lbs. ... If Kno (the company) has its way, students will be carrying around a Kno (the device) rather than a stack of textbooks. That's the reason for the huge screens; most textbook pages can be shown 'full size' on a 14-inch screen.' Engadget, who got some hands-on time with the device, says 'the entire experience is essentially a WebKit instance.' Price is still up in the air but Ina Fried at CNET says the company is aiming for a price well under $1,000."
So why not just get a laptop? For $400 you can get a 14 inch screen, full keyboard, a real OS, can do tons of other things, etc.
If its not e-ink to reduce strain on eyes, not running a real OS (as in full Windows, Linux or OS X), no full keyboard, etc. Why buy it? Under $1,000 means nothing, if its $200, yeah, I can think about getting one. For $250, I can buy a dedicated e-ink e-reader, for $350, I can buy a low end laptop or decent network, for $500 I can buy a great laptop or an iPad and anything more than $500 would just be pointless.
Really, why would I want a giant, heavy, LCD tablet not running a real OS?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They're clearly making up for something. I'll buy one of these, and say to my classmates, "Hey, when you stick that iPad in your backpack, does the backpack say, 'Is it in yet?'?".
I wasn't impressed with the performance of it in the video. The scrolling stuttered and he had to press/click some items multiple times in order for it to register. It is an interesting device so I hope they can improve its performance. I doubt they'll get the price "well under $1000" with two 14" touch screens.
The Kno will be a serious failure.
.epubs that ran well on Kindles and iPads alike. Of course, when you publish electronically, you can't justify $149 for a copy of Organic Chemistry 14th edition, and you can't publish new editions every year to force the used market out of business. Who cares about the consumer when the market is inelastic and professors are forcing you to buy books that equate to the yearly incomes of people in third world countries?
Publishers damn well could spend a tiny bit of time publishing
If publishers won't bother doing such a simple thing for popular devices, do you honestly think they are going to support this monstrosity?
A second screen seems less useful than a keyboard, so I'd rather just have the latest tablet offering from Lenovo/HP/etc which converts to a tablet mode with a pen. 5.5 lb is way too heavy to be used like a book (people complain about the ipad's 1.5 lb feeling heavy), though I suppose it's comparable to very large textbook. Still, a now-standard tablet with an extra-large battery and some decent software can do most of what this hopes to do and act as a primary laptop, all for around the same price ($800-$1000).
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I agree completely. I'm much more interested in the Entourage Edge, or at least the general idea of something like that. One regular LCD screen and one e-ink screen.
Of course i'll be waiting to see if there's a second generation version that fixes all the problems present in the first model. In particular, it needs to have Android 2.2, complete with access to the regular app store. Both screens need to have multitouch. You need to be able to put it in laptop configuration and use the bottom screen as a virtual keyboard. And it would be nice if when you have it folded all the way backwards you could use the screen on the back to control a pointer on the front screen. (I think the Motorola Backflip does something like that?) Oh yeah, and it needs expandable memory. Now if they could get all that together in one package for a reasonable price i'd be seriously interested.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's both incredibly cool, and unbelievably stupid. I love it. But they can't possibly make this monstrosity sell at a reasonable price.
Speaking as a student I want to know why all these companies keep thinking we want e-readers and e-books instead of textbooks. I don't want my textbook to go dead 9 hours into studying, or not be able to have 3-4 books open to 3-4 different sections each. I would however, like one for pleasure reading, but not a $500/5.5 lb machine. What exactly is this for?
There's the Asus Eee T91, a touchscreen netbook. It's cheaper than the other tablets, runs a real OS (Windows XP, and you could presumably put Linux on there), and isn't too heavy.
(Unfortunately the problem with Windows 7 Starter seems to be a problem with netbooks in general - there's always XP or Linux; and I'd still rather have Windows 7 starter than a locked down OS designed for phones that can't even multitask.)
True, though let's face it - if this was from Apple, there'd be people here praising how revolutionary and innovative the idea was.