Quote:
Originally Posted by TaureanBull
Ok. I will talk about near future prospects i.e 2-3 years.
Its likely to have a proper web browsing feature. Colour screen possibly. A better music player. Calling facility?! 
It may start infiltrating the schools and colleges as a replacement of textbooks.  |
I don't want a Web browsing feature on my 505. I don't even like using the browser on my Wii, on my unreasonably-huge-screen HD TV; I don't want the same thing only smaller, either. If I'm going to go wandering around the Web, I've got this computer for it. If I want to do it elsewhere, there's the laptop and the netbook. I have no more need for my ebook reader to function as a Web browser than for it to function as a birdfeeder.
If I could get a color screen with the same readability and resolution as my B&W screen, so I would only notice the difference when viewing color illustrations, that might be good. But given how few of the books I read have illustrations at all, and how few of
those are anything except line drawings, I will not accept any trade-offs whatsoever (especially abandonment of e-ink) for that color capability. Now, in something of a size for reading coffee table books, I can see that ... but that isn't my ebook reader.
I certainly don't want a better music player. I never use the one I have now -- I tried it once, found out it sucked battery life, and have ignored it ever since. I
have an MP3 player. I like it. I don't want my ebook reader to become a better MP3 player any more than I want my MP3 player to try to display ebooks for me (given that it's about the size of my thumb, I don't think it'll get very far with that).
Calling facility? Why, for the love of God, would I want to waste the weight, bulk, and annoyance of having my perfectly good ebook reader turn into a second-rate phone? I have a mobile phone. It hangs out on my belt. It's small. It does a great job of being a phone. I don't have to go around sticking an ebook reader to my face (thank God) and I hope I never need to.
Let's go back to knives, specifically kitchen knives. Like most people, I have a knife block full of knives in my kitchen (though, like most knife nuts, I daresay mine are a bit above average, though not professional chef level). And like most people I have a Swiss Army Knife or two hanging around. Yes, my Swiss Army Knife can do a sorta-okay job of being a knife, or being a pair of scissors, or being a nail file, or whatever. But when I'm cooking dinner, I get the knives I need from my excellent kitchen knife collection (not really a set anymore, as I've replaced several). When I need scissors, I have the kitchen shears there, the rugged but ugly paper scissors in the drawer, the general-purpose ones in the pencil jar, etc. When I need a screwdriver, unless it's an emergency, I get a
real screwdriver, of which I have dozens in every imaginable size and type, not the puny and awkward one supplied by the Swiss Army Knife. Etc., etc., etc. Simply put, I don't want a half-assed tool to do a half-assed job when an alternative is available. And that's as true of ebook readers as it is of pocket knives. There was a point in my life when I fell for the "but wait -- there's more!" pitch, and bought multi-purpose devices that did many things badly. I realized, after a while, that I'd rather have devices that did one thing well. I'll find the space, somewhere, to put my rice cooker because it cooks rice better than anything else does. And if I need a phone, a Web browser, an MP3 player, or a tablet computer, I'll get one -- not buy an ebook reader that's trying to be one.
I do, however, have that ebook chip for my Nintendo DS Lite. It's small, true, and LCD, but I have that with me on the rare occasions I don't have my 505 (it fits in even smaller pockets), and, as Thomas Jefferson said, I cannot live without books. Or at least I don't want to try.