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lord funk wrote:

1. Who doesn't have access to the internet everywhere nowadays?  Do you need to buy things on the bus instead of waiting until you get to the coffee shop?

2. That fantastic library can already go on your laptop / iPod / whatever.  Nothing new there.

I think the iPod (at least the 4g I have) isn't good enough. The Touch is better for it. I can think of a lot of hotels I've been in where the internet coverage is weak. Or someone's at an airport during a layover and finished the book on leg one and didn't want to pay the $10 to get online to get an ebook, and didn't want to deal with carrying an extra book on the plane.

I'm not thinking of the people that take a bus to work, but rather the people that are on the road 60% of the time or more.

I don't see anyone improving on the good old book anytime soon.

I have a few ebooks, mostly technical publications or reference material. The kind of stuff I look something up in it and then I'm done. I'm in and out in minutes.

I couldn't see reading a novel on a computer screen. Screw that.

Some things are better left alone and I think the book falls into that category.

(not to say that if someone invents a truly bad@ss ebook device I won't be all over it as fast as the next geek)

frankly wrote:

lord funk wrote:

frankly wrote:

Where can I buy electronic printed versions of books to take with me on my laptop? Aside from O'Reilly Safari which is a lame concept.

Frank

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but isn't that what http://www.ebooks.com/ is for?

That's what I meant. I was not aware of that site. The books there seem a bit expensive though. Any idea how they protect themselves from having people buy them and distribute them online to others?

Frank

Based on the info on this page at eBooks.com, my guess is that the downloads use some DRM scheme which limits their distribution.

jeff-o wrote:

Shed the cell access and all the complexity that comes with it, build in regular old wifi.

What complexity are you referring to? You either have a signal or you don't. You don't have to worry about if the network has WEP, WPA, 802.1X (which even the iPhone and iPod touch can't use), etc. Cell technology has been in use a lot longer than wi-fi. I'm really not seeing how wi-fi would have been a better choice for the limited amount of traffic they are going to be using on this thing.

I do agree with many of your other points.

Frank

jeff-o wrote:

frankly wrote:

jeff-o wrote:

Shed the cell access and all the complexity that comes with it, build in regular old wifi.

What complexity are you referring to? You either have a signal or you don't. You don't have to worry about if the network has WEP, WPA, 802.1X (which even the iPhone and iPod touch can't use), etc. Cell technology has been in use a lot longer than wi-fi. I'm really not seeing how wi-fi would have been a better choice for the limited amount of traffic they are going to be using on this thing.

I do agree with many of your other points.

Frank

I didn't mean technical complexity.  It's dealing with cell carriers that's the problem.  Apparently the Amazon e-book reader connects to the cell network without the user having to pay any fees.  There's no way that a network would allow this without SOMEONE footing the bill, which means that Amazon has to send cash back to the carriers for every byte transfered over their network.  Now, I'm sure they have some sort of ridiculously high volume discount, but it's still an added step to their model that  could trip them up if they're not careful.

Yes, could trip them up. But since they are including a cell  connection without any user interaction it turns out to be much more simple than wi-fi would.