[bob_ninja]

"proved to be a bust" is correct assuming the expectation of a rapid adoption by wider public (such as for iPods). Of course, such expectation is insane. iPod followed after many years of other music players already established the market and general public became familiar with digital music. Sony's device is only one of the 1st to establish a new eBook category that for the most part didn't exist (except for a niche of PDA and other exotic device users). Writer's expectations/assumptions are just plain wrong.

The newspaper delivery via wifi is an excellent feature that will certainly bring it a lot of customers even if many people don't care for it. There are plenty of people in large metropolitan areas spending 30-60 min on trains and busses commuting to work reading newspapers. I am sure they would love to save 5 min by not having to stop by the store to pickup paper, plus the annoyance of having to discard it afterwards, as well as fighting with big pages, etc. Instead Amazon could simply push the latest copy via wifi at a train/bus station as customer gets onto a train/bus. Simple, clean, quick/easy access to sections of interest, etc. Also newspapre companies save a bunch of money on printing and delivery, which these days is becoming more expensive with higher fuel costs.

What happened to the Illiad test with nespapers in Europe?

P.S.: The only issue is wifi drain on battery can be considerable. They would have to have an easy method of switching wifi on/off to ensure minimum power drain.