|
I agree with eP that wifi-capable models from Sony are likely in the future, but I doubt 3G-capable models are... or at least, not to the extent that Amazon has taken it with their Kindle Wifi+3G. No free browsing via 3G of just about any website. Maybe free 3G solely to connect to the Sony Reader Store, but then Sony would have to 1) contract with various carriers around the world for 3G coverage, and 2) actually open up their Store to international customers. When it comes to providing content internationally, or maybe even just providing content, Sony's been anaemic compared to Amazon. I suppose instead of providing access to the Sony Reader Store, they could make arrangements with local bookstores beyond the mere affiliations that currently exist. In any case, these are likely reasons why the Sony Reader 950 is only sold in the USA.
As for wifi in general, yeah, it would be pretty cool to see it on upcoming Sony models. I can understand how having wifi appeals to so many. In my opinion, having wifi on an eink device certainly isn't a disadvantage, but I also feel that sometimes people are unwilling to believe that we owners are fine with our non-wifi devices. (After all, we knew what we were buying.) No, when we say we're fine with our non-wifi devices, we're not always speaking out of jealousy or ignorance. We probably have various reasons for being happy with what we have. For myself, it's the various things which are best done on a proper computer, such as the habitual stripping of DRM, of backing up all my purchases to a remote webserver at least, and if necessary, fixing metadata and formatting. Then there's the things I do which encourage my latent miserliness, such as price comparison shopping, checking libraries, trawling all over the net for reviews, and having about enough browser tabs open that I drown in a sea of relevant information. People who own non-wifi devices make the tradeoff of instant gratification for other things that are important to them and that are more characteristic of how they read (which in my case seems to include pedantry and suspicion, hmm).
|