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Looks a lot like the Sony minus the A/C adapter, but plus HTML and prc compatibility, and the adapter sort of accounts for the slight price difference. But remember that a complaint about the iLiad arose after the fact that DRM was not supported (because you couldn't buy recent popular books for it).
On the other hand, Baen folks probably don't care about that for the most part.
One of the main draws would be an open environment to support third party apps. It's odd that it was missing. Maybe it was asked for, but not allowed? Or maybe that was an issue for future support because the retail software probably isn't set up that way. For example, they offered to basically provide functionality updates, and that might be difficult if the platform was different than their main retail products.
And I would have also expected foreign font support. I wonder why that was left out, or maybe if it is included.
I think most people are likely to prefer the Sony Reader, but this might find a nice niche market. I hope so. I'd like to see many devices succeed as long as we don't split up the 3rd party development efforts too much. Hopefully they will get the 1000 orders they are aiming for!
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