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walt526 · 06-03-2010, 05:46 PM

I can't speak for other people, but personally I didn't make the decision to purchase it until I saw it for myself last week at the Netbook Summitt in San Francisco. But the person showing it to me was familiar with the device and guided me through. I'm not sure it would have had as positive an impression had the demo unit just been on a shelf without a dedicated and well-trained salesperson to walk people through it. At most college bookstores, the staff isn't going to be that familiar with devices that they themselves don't use.

The online reviews that I read were mixed. Some people really like the eDGe, but others seem to think that its a great concept whose execution needs a lot of refinement. Personally, I think that the current execution is solid (although obviously it's still a work in progress), but that parts of the UI on both the eInk and LCD are not an intuitive as one might think. I was able to acclimate myself to my dad's new iPad in about 5 minutes without consulting a manual or even a help menu; for the eDGe, it took considerably (and as I said before, I'm still discovering new tricks and features) plus referencing the user's guide and searching this forum to figure out how to do some stuff. I've never used a iPhone/iTouch (and only a iPod briefly), so it's not a matter of being more familiar with the iPhone OS (I had also never used the Android OS before the eDGe). Rather, the intuitiveness of the iPad comes from the fact that it does fewer functions with a more intuitive UI. Since the eDGe is a much more complicated device, it requires considerably more time to learn than a iPad or a device that is exclusively an eReader. Even if the user is relatively tech savvy.

Unfortunately, I could see some people (particularly college students) picking up the eDGe and deciding that they don't like it in less than 5 minutes because it's not immediately obvious how to access certain functions (e.g., how to annotate something on the eInk side) and there is no one on hand to show them how to do it. In other words, basically the reaction of the less favorable reviews that the eDGe has received from certain tech sites.

My advice to a new or prospective user of the eDGe is to be patient with it and give yourself a couple of days before deciding whether or not you like it. The required learning curve or acclimation period is higher than an iPad or a Kindle. Again, a lot of that is do to the fact that it has more extensive functionality than either of the devices. The other is that not only is the eDGe itself a work-in-progress, but so is Android.

In my opinion, the best salespeople of eDGes are eDGe users. If eDGe really takes off, it will be through viral marketing (i.e., people showing it off to their colleagues and classmates). Putting it on the shelves of college bookstores or other brick-and-mortar retail sites probably won't sell a lot of units (in fact, there's a good chance that an "unsupervised" user spending less than 5 minutes playing around with it will decide that they don't like it).

06-03-2010, 05:46 PM	#5
walt526 Edge User	I can't speak for other people, but personally I didn't make the decision to purchase it until I saw it for myself last week at the Netbook Summitt in San Francisco. But the person showing it to me was familiar with the device and guided me through. I'm not sure it would have had as positive an impression had the demo unit just been on a shelf without a dedicated and well-trained salesperson to walk people through it. At most college bookstores, the staff isn't going to be that familiar with devices that they themselves don't use. The online reviews that I read were mixed. Some people really like the eDGe, but others seem to think that its a great concept whose execution needs a lot of refinement. Personally, I think that the current execution is solid (although obviously it's still a work in progress), but that parts of the UI on both the eInk and LCD are not an intuitive as one might think. I was able to acclimate myself to my dad's new iPad in about 5 minutes without consulting a manual or even a help menu; for the eDGe, it took considerably (and as I said before, I'm still discovering new tricks and features) plus referencing the user's guide and searching this forum to figure out how to do some stuff. I've never used a iPhone/iTouch (and only a iPod briefly), so it's not a matter of being more familiar with the iPhone OS (I had also never used the Android OS before the eDGe). Rather, the intuitiveness of the iPad comes from the fact that it does fewer functions with a more intuitive UI. Since the eDGe is a much more complicated device, it requires considerably more time to learn than a iPad or a device that is exclusively an eReader. Even if the user is relatively tech savvy. Unfortunately, I could see some people (particularly college students) picking up the eDGe and deciding that they don't like it in less than 5 minutes because it's not immediately obvious how to access certain functions (e.g., how to annotate something on the eInk side) and there is no one on hand to show them how to do it. In other words, basically the reaction of the less favorable reviews that the eDGe has received from certain tech sites. My advice to a new or prospective user of the eDGe is to be patient with it and give yourself a couple of days before deciding whether or not you like it. The required learning curve or acclimation period is higher than an iPad or a Kindle. Again, a lot of that is do to the fact that it has more extensive functionality than either of the devices. The other is that not only is the eDGe itself a work-in-progress, but so is Android. In my opinion, the best salespeople of eDGes are eDGe users. If eDGe really takes off, it will be through viral marketing (i.e., people showing it off to their colleagues and classmates). Putting it on the shelves of college bookstores or other brick-and-mortar retail sites probably won't sell a lot of units (in fact, there's a good chance that an "unsupervised" user spending less than 5 minutes playing around with it will decide that they don't like it).