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Old 05-29-2013, 10:29 AM   #10
Elfwreck
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Posts: 5,185
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
A4/letter-sized ereaders would be *fragile.* Something like the DX is plenty big enough for most academic purposes; the problem, as mentioned, is software. Device manufacturers have been pushing for ease of use of novels, plus bells-and-whistles: games, video support, instant access to a store.

Annotation and highlighting is very limited. Cross-references between books is nonexistent. Image support is lousy. Ability to write as well as read--switching easily between a user-created document and multiple books--is nonexistent.

While the academic market is small (solid, but small, as these things go), the corporate market is not--anyone who created an awesome usable-by-academics ereader would have also created the device that would replace iPads in boardrooms. Some companies are already giving their managers Kindles to read documents, but there's limited use for them; something that was good at reading corporate PDFs (which are mostly converted Word or PPT files) and allowed substantial markup would sell very, very well. Bonus points if it had a way to network with other nearby readers of the same document/ebook. (Which aca-research could also use.)
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