new eee-reader announced

[piranha]

hoh, baby. asus is about to shake up the ebook world with the release of a cheap reader.

at around £100 i'd buy it right away. it's larger than the ones out now, but it harkens back to one of the prototype models i was eyeing years ago, which never made it to market. i don't mind that it's larger; though it depends a bit on how heavy it will be as well.

here's an older image of the concept model, from CeBIT of march this year:


times online announcement

engadget's look at the concept model

Comments

[afuna]

Hmm, that looks very interesting. I'm not leaping on it until after the price has officially come out (and likely I'll wait for an iteration or two for stuff to shake itself out), but that tempts me more than any other that's come before it.

[graydon]

I like the two-leaves design quite a bit, but, if it's colour, and it's cheap, it's some sort of active rather than reflective display, so either it's heavy like several bricks or it has the battery life of a desktop replacement laptop, and in either case I would be reluctant to consider it. (Well, either that or ASUS has solved series production for full colour e-paper and are going to smile seraphically as everyone gibbers when the real thing gets out there.)

I have, personally, more hope of utility from the Always Innovating Touch Book, though it's really good to see Asus entering this market.

[piranha]

*snicker*. yeah, i am not expecting seraphic smiles -- colour e-ink ain't happening for another 6 months, and i also don't expect that to come in at prices like that. i'd expect the eee-reader to have a short battery life _and_ to be heavier than anything else on the market. on the other hand it looks like they'll be throwing extra laptop capabilities into the mix. if i can have a web browser open and an ebook at the same time, that would be very cool.

the battery life doesn't bother me; i am keeping the OLPC (my current ebook reader) plugged in most of the time. but that will certainly be a factor for many people. heavy, yeah, that concerns me more; i would like something lighter than the OLPC, which i can't really hold in my hands for long.

[graydon]

If we've very, very lucky, it's cheap because those are new-process plastic substrate OLED colour screens with low power requirements.

Scaling things by random hands is fraught with peril, but that looks like it's got two leaves each about the size of a letter sheet of paper. Which implies something like a 12" display panel at some odd ratio, which to me suggests it either can't be at that price point or it can't have conventional TFT screens in it.

[piranha]

oh, the touchbook looks nice! it's in a different price class of course, but that looks like a spiffy design. i hadn't even heard of it -- i definitely must put the netbook category on my watch list.

too bad that running on linux will limit it right from the start in the market -- i'm all for it, but lots of people won't be.

[graydon]

I'm pretty sure the Always Innovating folks are going for the "giant phone" approach; there are apps, it's visual, there's no discussion of what's making it all work under there.

On the other hand, the options for running other things on ARM are going to be pretty limited. It's a "I want battery life, dammit" sort of device.