I'm going to top post here because that's my normal habit on the Baen's Bar.
Bob, you are right. It
*IS* odd that we haven't stated there is an open environment for the NAEB reader. Of course, that is because, at this point in time, we don't know what Bookeen is offering in its derivation of the STAReBOOK.
Actually, as we still don't have evaluation units to test, examine and modify, we don't know much at all. Trust me, as the Chief Technical Officer for NAEB, I am concerned by this. One thing we've done is to start looking for programmers who can expand the functionality of the basic software and OS with features users would like, such as support for rocketbook, ereader and fbreader as well as text-to-speech. Given that the STAReBOOK and Bookeen devices support music/mp3s, I think we already could support playing audiobooks.
But I don't
*KNOW* this. When I know this, you all will know this.
Derek Benner
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
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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