[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

The device you're talking about is a DR 1000s and is currently priced at 859USD. I use it quite a bit to read PDF's and take notes on them. I wouldn't call it a speed reading device, but for my uses, it doesn't need to be.

I covered that in my post. Too expensive for what it can do since being e-ink it's limited to reading and marking up stuff. I wouldn't pay more than $300 or so for something like that as I just don't need/want it bad enough as printouts suffice fine.

Get up to that $800-1000 range and it needs to be a much more functional device as you can buy a damn good laptop or PC for that, so I can't justify dropping that kind of cash to read and markup a handful of pdfs a month.

If it's a multi-media table that I can also use for browsing the web on the couch, watching HD video, playing games, replace my PDA/calendar etc., then I'd think more about it for $800-1000.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

How would you do this? What form would the markups take? What software would you use?

Just needs a touch screen and a stylus whatever software to allow writing directly on the documents just like you would a paper printout. I don't see it as complicated the iRex does it already, and even easier with an LCD touch screen that doesn't have lag issues etc.

I'd say it's quite a ways off. Your application is one use case, but how many other people really want to do that? Offhand, not enough to justify the investment needed to produce something that can do it.

Definitely a ways off. But I think there's a lot of interest/use for such devices in academia, in business (to switch to a paperless office). Lots of professions could use something that was basically digital paper--replace notepads in meetings, replace printing out scholarly articles to read and highlight, paperless medial offices etc.

I feel the same about tablets. What will you do with a tablet that you can't do with other things? I can see plenty of specialized uses for a device with a reasonably large touch screen for things where you can just tap or swipe, like checkbox forms, but too many applications still require still require data entry, which means a keyboard of some sort or dealing with handwriting recognition.

Again, just to replace paper. E-ink readers, PCs, Laptops etc. are useless to me for reading and marking up academic articles and books. I highlight the shit out of the, jot tons of notes in the margins as my time is very pressed and I don't want to have to re-read an article the next time I'm writing something or looking up something for a lecture etc.

You just can't do that stuff on a laptop, PC, current tablet laptops etc. in a manner that feels very similar to reading and marking up documents on paper. Some people can read on a PC and use the Acrobat annotation features etc. I just have never been able to read documents on a PC screen

E-ink is great for just straight reading with no flipping through looking for stuff or making things up. But it's too slow and laggy to have good stylus markup, loses resolution with a touch screen, page turns to slow to flip through to look for a particular passage I highlighted or a table of findings etc.

I do agree with you that such tablets that I describe may have somewhat limited appeal and be a niche just for academics and other professionals with such need. But as I said, as long as one comes out that suits my needs, I couldn't care less if it sales 1000 units or 10 million units.

But I do think a full fledged multimedia tablet could catch on more for light web browsing, video watching, game playing etc. Kind of replace netbooks which I find pretty useless since they lack the power for most streaming video, games and other stuff I spend a lot of time online. It will be interesting to see what comes of the rumored Apple tablet. If anyone can make it take off it would be them and their marketing tour de force.

But time will tell on that. I'd just like a nice solution, at a reasonable price that can allow me to read and mark up my academic PDFs exactly the same way I do printouts now. Until that happens, the trees can suffer as I'll keep printing them out.