[goodereader]

Hey Guys, I thought I would throw in my .002 cents in on this issue, since I cover e-readers professionally.

E-Readers have been around for 4 or 5 years now and emerged from a fringe gadget that only technophiles knew about, to infiltrating popular culture. Think of all of the Amazon and other commercials you have seen and the recent Kobo spot on the Office. The technology is sound and e-Ink holdings which controls most of the entire market for screens and underlying technologies that make e-readers possible has allot of money.

I do not believe in the doom-singers that say e-readers are going to die, the world is going to end, repent etc. Clearly in 2010 e-readers went on a resurgence and we saw a ton of companies come out with the models and succeed (Barnes and noble, Kobo) and others fail (tons, Alex e-reader etc)

Clearly e-readers via their e-ink provide an unparalleled reading experience and with the advent of color e-ink from companies such as e-Ink Holdings, Liquidvista (aka Samsung) Bridgestone and Vivitek and more, we will see e-readers hang onto their market share for a few more years as new technology will make them more viable on a commercial level.

Will e-Readers last? No one is an oracle or can predict where the market will go, maybe they will be going back to being a fringe gadget, but with e-readers basically saving the bloated retail chain of barnes and noble with the success of the Nook, Nook Color and the NookNews (650,000 subs in 2months) e-readers are tremendously important to the sustainability to some big companies.

We might see a convergence sometime in the next 3 or 4 years, as tablets become more refined and underlying technologies such as Pixel QI, and e-Ink develop more, I bet we'll see hybrid tablets that will have e-ink mode with 16+ levels of gray-scale then flip a switch and full LCD 1080 P resolution + phone etc.

I Will not besmirch CNET or any other rinky dink blog that makes these kind of public proclamations. News is primarily done to get people talking and to raise the companies profile. Its why CNET brought 50 cent in as a guest at CES, it draws ratings and clicks (advertising dollars) I do disagree with them being off-base with their list of dying technologies, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Honestly, I would not pay much attention to their story, if you enjoy your e-reader in the here and now, that's all that matters.