10-10-2012, 02:41 AM | #16 |
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Um, because 13 bucks is the subsidized price. There's a subscription fee involved.
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10-10-2012, 02:48 AM | #17 | |
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As to this device as shown: I hate artificially limited crap. No USB, or WLAN, or storage card? Fine in a bare-bones reader, I suppose, and my Laptop does have Bluetooth. A limit of 5 books? Just plain silly. Proprietary format? Nothing I'm likely to put up with, having a vested interest in standard epubs. If they provide a PC app that allows me to prepare my existing epubs to their format, maybe, but the way I see it, this is another attempt to tie me to their ecosystem. In that case, thanks, but no thanks; I'd just get myself a Kindle if I approved of that business model. |
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10-10-2012, 03:02 AM | #18 |
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10-10-2012, 03:14 AM | #19 | |
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Also, I don't get why they target such a low price, with such a crippled device. Make it 30$ subsidized instead, add WiFi and remove the phone and 5 books limitations. They would sell tons. How can this scheme be a logical business plan? |
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10-10-2012, 03:51 AM | #20 |
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I actually don't mind it as an idea. Cheap, light, e-Ink and a long lasting battery. Very limited, but some aren't going to be totally put out by the limitations.
If I'm not mistaken this is a read-only device that you load the book on but then can't copy it anywhere else. It can be read totally separately from the phone only requiring the phone for the initial transfer. If that's right it sounds like an awesome way to have guilt-free ebook loaning to friends without feeling like a pirate. |
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10-10-2012, 06:30 AM | #21 |
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If the Beagle can only display books from the carrier's ebookstore, of course.
Sold at typical, non-discounted, German print prices. It will be a gold mine! (Think the carriers.) This is the Palm Foleo of ebook readers. |
10-10-2012, 07:05 AM | #22 |
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So what kind of subscription is it sold with anyway? Is it like an add-on you can get if you get a cell-phone contract?
I think a product like this has a lot of potential, so sad to see it locked down by all of these restrictions. I wonder what the unsubsidized price is? But I am really not understanding why there is 4 GB if it really can only hold 5 books at once. |
10-10-2012, 07:50 AM | #23 |
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I think I get the basis for this device. Tell me where I'm wrong ...
It contains no rendering platform; no xhmtl, no epub, no fonts, no text search, nothing but a store of images it displays one by one. It simply displays an image of each page as formatted by the parent off-board app (which acts as a server, of sorts) and stored in the books memory. If the above is even close, it might have uses, but not any related to general reading. I certainly wouldn't have any use for it. |
10-10-2012, 08:42 AM | #24 | |
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Nate confirmed the 5 book limit from Txtr. The evidence supporting the bitmapped DLs is the 5 books-in-4GB limit and that ADEPT-DRM'ed ebooks can be read on it without counting as an extra authentication device. The bulkiness of the files suggests the bitmaps won't be compressed, either, so the thing is likely just feeding bitmaps from flash to the eink buffer. Or maybe just remapping the buffer to different parts of the flash memory by changing a pointer. Hmm, those are 8-bit era techniques... straight out of the Apple II. Not even up to ATARI or Commodore levels. The LINUX crowd should be proud: no bloat in that code! |
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10-10-2012, 09:10 AM | #25 | |||
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10-10-2012, 10:03 AM | #26 | |
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10-10-2012, 11:01 AM | #27 | ||
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That's how they get it to not count as a read device, BTW. They're not actually uploading the ebook, but a raster clone of it. Analog Loophole, anyone? Quote:
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10-10-2012, 11:35 AM | #28 | |
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I love the idea of a $20 ereader running on user-replaceable AAAs...great very affordable and portable tech for non-techie people. This could be a HUGE development for ebooks if done properly. Who do we have to bribe to make this happen? |
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10-10-2012, 11:41 AM | #29 |
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10-10-2012, 11:56 AM | #30 |
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After reading the article on golem.de about it:
Yes. It's basically an e-ink digital photo frame with BT-connection. No own format support than raw image data. Rendering, transfer, etc. is completely depending on what the corresponding (android) app will support. This awful waste of internal storage is market-speech insofar sold as an advantage, that the actual computing hardware in the device can be kept at a bare minimum. Could be a nice add on toy if someone hacks it's BT data transfer protocol allowing individual use of the frame. Let's just say: The rediscovery of dumb terminals. Keeping in mind, that companies still try to sell 'clouds' as something new and shiny, I just ask myself how much of old computing tech concepts will be necro-revived for mobile devices. |
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