Worth Reading?
+20 [20 votes]
Loading ...
These two new eBook readers coming out of Taiwan should start offering up some better prices and more competition to the Kindle and other players like it thus driving down the price. Personally I’m not much of a reader, which is kind of funny all things considered, so this whole market is lost on me, but I like the technology behind it.
There are two new readers from Netronix, which is at least in part owned by PVI, there is the 9.7-inch EB-300 running WinCE and the 6-inch EB-100 running on Linux. Both devices use E-Ink displays for basic usage such as reading digital books.
The real news is that the WinCE device with an E-Ink display is kind of a new approach and could mean great things such as the use of Mobipocket, eReader, and maybe even uBook for reading through DRM’ed eBooks. It also allows for the ability to read TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, MP3, and AAC file formats, it also has Bluetooth and WiFi as well. That’s all on the larger model as well as a touchscreen, headphone jack, 1200×825@170DPI resolution, and TrueType fonts meaning you’ll be able to see the words better.
[via TeleRead]
I do really love my Kindle, but I also track new devices which may be even better, or may be the newer generation of a similar reader just showing up. And with ebook readers the bigger the better. But I would have to give up my wireless access via the Sprint high speed network provided by Kindle, which I would really hate to do.
So now I see the NetTronics — but not the price, or really many but the most basic details. I’m impressed that it comes out of Taiwan — they really do great work there.
One problem is that I have a lot of DRM secure books on my Kindle, which I would definately want to transfer to any new device such as the NetTronics. I know this is not allowed, since the publishers want to lock you into a system which makes you pay over and over again for the same book if you want it on a new device. But I know this doesn’t violate the copyright, and I don’t think anyone should try to add on to the common law copyright by doing things like adding digital rights management.
I still remember the ill-thought out copy protection for programs back when the PC was still new. And I really no part of it, but I have no choice at the moment, other than to refuse to buy them. And maybe I will yet.
Charles Wilkes, San Jose, Calif.